Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Ultra by The Luna Brothers ::
by William the Bloody
Pearl Penalosa is having what some might call "a dry spell." After a long term relationship ended, she has unofficially sworn off men for about fives years now. Instead Pearl is focusing on her career. Her best friends Olivia and Jen think it's about time Pearl got back out there and gave dating another chance. The three have a girls' night out and on a whim decide to have their fortunes read. After the fortune teller says Pearl will find true love in the next seven days, her friends are more determined than ever to find her a man. The next day when they meet for lunch, Pearl runs into a cute guy at the restaurant. He gives her his number and she takes it, why the heck not, right? Did I mention that Pearl is internationally known as the super heroine Ultra? Yeah, she might be intimidating for a regular guy to date.
The Good: It always takes guts for people to come up with totally new super hero type characters and start a fresh comic universe, but the Luna Brothers did it and did a darn fine job. Ultra was only an eight issue mini series, but it felt like this universe had already been around for years. They really thought this whole world through. People who want to be super heroes work for super hero agencies. It's they're paying job. You can make your identity public or not (most do), and it's kind of like being a rock star. Imagine everyone knowing who Superman is, him being stopped by photographers just for going out to dinner, and also landing endorsement deals, or maybe riding his fame as a hero to do side projects like sell a book or album? It's like that, and it feels natural. Our lead character Pearl Penalosa is Ultra, and she's one of the most famous super heroines around right now. Her best friends Olivia and Jen are super women Aphrodite and Cow Girl respectively and they're not without their own fame. As Aphrodite, Olivia works for the swanky hero agency Olympus and sometimes uses her incredibly good looks to pose suggestively for men's magazines. Jen garnered quite a lot of publicity as Cow Girl for her humanitarian work in Africa, using her super powers to reroute rivers to impoverished villages. The topic of this mini series however, is not really their super powers and their fights with villains. It more or less revolves around Pearl's love life, which had been nonexistent for years and now she agrees to go on a date with this regular guy she meets, when normally she dates other super hero men. The story focuses on that date and repercussions it has in Pearl's life for good and bad. What I really like about this mini series is that it wasn't about a super hero group or saving the world or any complicated parallel universes or anything overly weird like that. Pearl, Olivia and Jen don't work as heroines together, barring to occasional assist (or "team-up" if you prefer), but rather they're just good girl friends. This comic does a good job of keeping it "small" (not cosmic, in outerspace, etc), personal, and relatable. The art good and clean, with good colouring. The only thing I can think of that it reminds me of david Lopez's work on the current run on Catwoman, which is a good thing, drawing powerful and confident women without over accentuating the boobs and butt.
The Bad: This comic series was kind of publicized as being "Sex & the City with capes", and I suppose that's fairly accurate in the way that it's written to be a Sex & the City rip-off written by men who have never actually seen an episode of the show but think this is what it's like. As a result, Olivia comes off as so obviously a Kim Cattral character that it is sickening. A hot, older blonde with a beauty mark in the same spot and no serious relationships but quite a string of sex partners? Please. A little originality would have been nice. I also found most of the dialogue to feel rather forced. It seemed as though they were trying to hard to push it the "open, liberated women sex talk" direction, often using sexual analogies when it really wasn't necessary or even natural form of expression. My main gripe about the art is that they do panel replications way too often, even in the first issue. This is where they basically photocopy one panel and reuse it several times, sometimes making very minor changes such as where they eyes are looking. I don't mind seeing that a little, heck it can even be necessary, but they did it about TEN TIMES in issue #1 alone. Too much, Mr. Luna.
All in all, this was a fun mini series. This is one book where it felt like the most natural portrayal of the day to lives of super heroes in their off time. These aren't people who live in giant mansions or castles made of crystal, they have apartments in the city like the rest of us. It makes sense to me that being a super hero would make you famous and the targets of Tabloid papers and such. For a story about a girl with super powers, it felt real and true to life. The publicity says "Sex & the City with capes", but I say it's more like Marvel's old book Alias, only no one's a P.I. If you go for stuff like Noble Causes or Alias, then you'll probably dig it.
B+
