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Underground > Comic Books >

Vimanarama #3

19:29 / 08.06.05

The last issue of Vimanarama is (finally!) shipping 15th June.

Check out the preview here: http://www.buzzscope.com/reviews.php?id=4400

20:20 / 08.06.05

I thought it shipped MONTHS ago!

Oops.

04:46 / 10.06.05

finally! anyone knows what have pushed it back? Bond said on an interview when #1 was out that the script had been ready for a year.

14:04 / 10.06.05

I believe Bond just had his first kid, which will tank anybody's productivity (especially if they work from home, which he probably does).

16:17 / 10.06.05

HTML is screwed—corrected link here.

Preview looks psycho-delic and supa sexy, and no spoilers whatsoever.

16:32 / 12.06.05

oh yeah, their baby, I forgot about that.

what a neat cover. I'm enjoying this book a lot so far, and will not be surprised if it's the next one with a movie adaptation attached to be announced.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

21:05 / 15.06.05

WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE.

So, surprise. This turned out to be my favorite entry in the Vertigo 2004-2005 Triumvirate. This issue distilled all of Grant's varied ideas and notions into twenty or so pages of the most joyous bouts of comic book storytelling I've seen in an awful long time. Characters collapsing into unonsciousness to fight evil! Ben Rama FIGHTING ON! TRUE FUCKING LOVE!

I swear I was just grinning ear to ear through this whole damn issue. And the way everything wrapped up? Like if you'd pulled back from the last page of Flex and fast forwarded a few months to see what life would be like? FUCK YES. I WANT TO READ THAT.

Philip Bond? I'm thanking YOU in my Oscar acceptance speech.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:20 / 16.06.05

Bond is the Love.

I LIKED that Sofia got to play the part she did in this last issue, but I wanted her to be up there on the last page in much the same way Ali was...

12:02 / 16.06.05

'Vertigo 2004 2005 Triumvirate'

?

dude, all the cool kids are calling it the seagull trilogy.

13:52 / 16.06.05

seagull trilogy

Brill!

Will they be collected hardcover thusly? Or do I have to buy the materials and paste it together m'self?

Haus of Mystery

16:13 / 16.06.05

That was so...so fucking JOYOUS.

I really loved this comic. This comic owned me.

"And do the GREAT LAUGH they said"

And Philip Bond is le sex. That panel of Ali made out of words? Floored me.

Best stoned read for a very long time.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:50 / 16.06.05

The moment where Ali looks back at the light and is burnt...brilliant...

17:36 / 16.06.05

"Did we persecute Atlanteans?" GENIUS.

It's still my least favorite of the trilogy (what can top SEAGUY?), but that's like asking me to pick my least favorite kind of chocolate. It's all good, baby.

Though the page-border thing just seemed slightly meta-by-numbers in a "Come on, we get it" perfunctory kind of way. Still, small complaints.

22:18 / 16.06.05

dude, all the cool kids are calling it the seagull trilogy.

Yeah, I've also been calling these and The Filth the 'Crack! Comics' (did you know there was a series called that in like the '40s? Yeah.)

Actually, where were the seagulls in this?

... got them. And, of course, (the) seagulls = Brighton.

The comic? Well, it's definitely a) bright and b) cheerful. So yeah.

Essential Dazzler

22:23 / 16.06.05

This was brilliant, of course, but having April's "on The Ledge" column, and another bloody Matrix insert was a kick in the teeth. All this delay for a baby. I vote for the sterilisation of all artistes

Haus of Mystery

08:46 / 17.06.05

Yeah..that Matrix thing. Notice how Mozzer still keeps getting shafted by that movie?

09:13 / 17.06.05

I've just discovered that, incredibly, it's possible to remove those pages without permanently damaging the comic itself. Yay me!

09:46 / 17.06.05

Can you send it to me? I'm collecting them and throwing the comics away.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:00 / 17.06.05

I don't think this was enough to rescue the series, but this was definitely the best issue of the three, and on its own was a really enjoyable read. This in part because it had the nice, interpersonal Morrisonian touches - people showing brief but heartfelt care about each other in the face of vast cosmic insanity - and also because of Bond's art, which was fantastic. Ben Rama actually did something useful and noble, even if in doing so he revealed himself to be Blue Beetle. the gun on the table in the first act actually did go off in the third, which was nice.

I'm still unconvinced by the "Hey! Crazy Bollywood hijinx!" stuff, here - partly because the reference points for all the characters seem to be taken directly from East is East, but also because Morrison seems to see the differences between cultures to be primarily aesthetic - you want dayglo deities, you need your Indians. I would have liked this to have been a bit... not deeper, necessarily, but more interested.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:18 / 17.06.05

Loved loved loved it. DIDN'T make me cry on the bus, but I did have to restrain the urge to jump up, punching the air Tom Cruise style, and shout "FUCK YEAH!!!" at that last panel.

Proof, if proof be need be, that you (or at least I) shouldn'r judge a comic until you (or at least I)'ve read it to the end. Oh, I was enjoying it, sure, but the first two seemed a bit "disposable fun". Not that there's owt wrong with that, mind, but now it's become something I'll probably read repeatedly and treasure for always and ever and stuff.

Haus is right about the use of the pantheons, etc- George really was, as far as I could tell, just using them as storytelling Lego. But boy, did he build a cool spaceship with it.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

19:17 / 17.06.05

HA!

I'm picturing myself crouched on top of Oprah's couch, biting my lower lip and then LEAPING into the air and, yes, that is exactly how I felt when I finished this book.

With this and Seven Soldiers, Grant is really blossoming into quite a nice little writer.

17:49 / 01.07.05

Well, that was certainly... interesting. I'm not really sure what to think of the series as a whole. It was alright, but on that gut level, it's probably my least favorite Morrison work in years. But yeah, this was probably the best chapter, way better than #2, anyway. And I'll also put my vote in for wishing Sofia was up there with Ali at the end, too; I think she deserved it, and I was almost sure that's where the story was heading...

The Bond art was great, though. *Adored* that panel where Ali is composed of words. As well as the page with the day-glo god from heaven, and the page where Ben Rama swoops out of the heavens to vaporize Ull-Shattan with the magic of peace and love.

It was nice and pretty and meta and had a happy ending (and it didn't follow my prediction!) and was all joycore and stuff, but... I dunno, y'know? It's just... it's in that place. I like it, but it didn't blow me away, at least, not *yet.* Perhaps on future readings.

"I followed your rope."

20:47 / 01.07.05

I've found that rereads are remarkably beneficial with this. Not for the standard reason of piecing the plot together, but purely a thematic matter.
Our boy's such a lovely badass in a very understated way; just him and that hammer versus utter madness and pompous dayglo spacegods.
And neither the artist or author seemed to be intent on beating us over the head with racial or cultural education. Certain elements were there because they're there in the characters' day-to-day lives, others were meta-commentary of expectation (thinking of the not-quite-dancing-in-the-streets bit from the first issue), but the godheroes are a splendid mishmash and there's no footnoting *important foreign culture fact number seven*.
I do not, however, understand how so many critics and readers seem to've been convinced this took place in India.

00:01 / 02.07.05

Because it's full of brown people.

12:34 / 02.07.05

Am I the only one who just wants to dig out Rogan Gosh and bemoan the loss of Brendan McCarthy to the comics industry?

Though not. :]

20:40 / 02.07.05

Haus, like in the previous threads, I agree with every word.

McCarthy? I bemoan his loss too, why doesn't McCarthy do comics anymore? Did he go to Hollywood or something?

I haven't enjoyed anything Morrison's done since We3. Superman is still half a year away.

Poke it with a stick

09:36 / 03.07.05

Slightly off-topic, but thought you might like it -

Draw pictures using words here. Philip Bond would approve, I reckon.

00:11 / 06.07.05

Brendan McCarthy is back, but only in a British comic. He is illustrating a forthcoming Shimura story in the Judge Dredd Megazine, according to a notice on Robbie Morrison's website...