Some comics (from FCBD 2016)

Thanks to a lovely friend who picked them up for me, I got my hands on three completely new-to-me comic book issues on Free Comic Book Day. Since the idea was to get a feel for these stories/characters and decide whether I'm interested in reading more, I'm going to post some quick reviews of them. Because why wouldn't I?

First up was DC SuperHero Girls, a comic that takes the most prominent DC female superheroes and puts them into a school together, as teenagers. This one is definitely written with a younger audience in mind, but I still enjoyed it. The biggest highlight for me was the costumes — no boobs falling out, sensible footwear, and most of them have actual pants, including Wonder Woman! The bright colours and cheerful art style was also nice and pleasant to read. The story is pretty basic and straightforward (a symptom of being for a younger audience, I suppose), but was sufficient for me to enjoy the issue. Although I'm not quite in the right demographic, I am definitely interested in buying the trade if I come across it.

Next up was Spectrum, which turned out to be almost the complete opposite of DC SuperHero Girls. This is a spin-off comic from Con Man, the Kickstarter-funded TV show by Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion. In Con Man Tudyk and Fillion play actors who once stared in a cult classic SF TV show which got cancelled but still has a lot of fans, hence the two of them going to a lot of sci-fi conventions. Since in Con Man, which I have watched, it's strongly implied that they are making fun of their lives post-Firefly, I expected the Spectrum comic, which is set in the world of the fictional TV show, to be more like Firefly. It wasn't. It was kind of space opera-y, with lots of aliens and a magical girl (OK, that bit's like Firefly). They tried to cram a lot into this zeroth issue and I found it a little hard to follow or see the point of. Basically, would not recommend based on this FCBD issue.

Finally, I got Doctor Who: Four Doctors, in large part because my mum is a massive Doctor Who fan and sampling a comic seemed like a good way to see whether she would enjoy more Doctor Who comics. This one has four short Doctor Who stories in it, one each with the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Doctors (i.e. all the ones from New Who). We had Twelve and Osgood vs giant robot; Eleven and Alice, a companion not in the TV show, vs homicidal chainsaw man and the Doctor making a too-deep-for-the-length-of-the-story point; Ten and two non-TV companions vs TARDIS ghosts; Nine, Rose and Jack Harkness vs magically appearing monuments. The last story was definitely my favourite, with the right blend of interesting ideas and familiar characters. I didn't hate the other three stories, but did feel rather meh about them. I probably won't bother going out of my way to read more Doctor Who comics; the TV show is enough for me.