Customer Reviews (1)

A Forgotten Noir Gem:This Might Be Vachss's Best
This is the original no-killing-technique-barred, no-roadblocks-stalling-the-truth noir comic. It's also one of the only noir series or set of stories where the moral never, no matter how bloody and ugly its setting, gets tainted. Long before Brubaker and (soon to join the fray with a series that's going to cause him to be called a master of noir, trust me on this one) Darwyn Cooke, there was a ten-comic series by Andrew Vachss called Hard Looks. And Issue #3 is one of the hardest hitting comics of the ten-comic series. It's masterfully well done aesthetically, from the quality of the adaptation and writing to the art itself. This volume could be a noir-comic textbook. If Isound fan boyish (I'll go ahead and admit than I'm a fan of Vachss and now have to work hard to view his works objectively sometimes), bear in mind that this isn't a fan boy's comic. This is a social worker's comic (Vachss's first post-collegiate job was investigating STDs in children, which often led back to relatives, even parents), a policewo/man's comic, a comic for anyone with a heart inclined to help and save others or anyone who's lived through horror and still stayed strong and didn't perpetuate a cycle of hatred and evil. As to the work itself (WARNING:SPOILERS HEREAFTER), the cover has a scary looking guy sternly but mournfully studying the body of a dead woman (it actually comes from the third story); it's evocative and chilling. If oil paints could render blood and death beautifully, James O'Barr would be the one to do the job. (This is, by the way, the first issue where Vachss jumps into the "Stalking Horse" letters column - and the name is a lesson in itself - to directly answer readers comments.) George Pratt's adaptation of "Cripple" is the smartest comic adaptation of one of Vachss's prose works yet. He decides to reverse the tale, beginning it with the perhaps righteous murderer finishing the job and taking a bus ride home, having killed a man in a wheelchair and ending the tale by giving money to another man in a wheelchair. Pratt is riffing on Vachss's work the way a jazz saxophonist riffs on his music, each visual tale being told parallel to one another and enhancing the total effect. "Step on a Crack" was at the time (July 1992) a tale only found here. Two young friends who have mutual respect for each other have to deal with several issues:rough, hard lives growing up; masculinity and sexuality (one bravely coming out with his homosexuality, the other literally fighting tooth and nail in prison so no one can ever call him gay); protecting lives and taking them (a policeman vs. a serial killer). The tales title comes from the superstition of "step on a crack, break your mother's back"; it becomes brutally real when one boy's best friend attempts to step on every single crack in the sidewalk because his mother has systematically abused him. All I can say is that it's flawless and it makes you think twice before judging someone. "Anytime I Want" is about a man who has raised a family so that he can abuse them any way he wants, any time he wants. (Let me say here:This is not some gruesome rendition of evil so that we can vicariously experience it. This is real. I worked with sex offenders for five-and-a-half years and saw a grandfather who had actually done this very thing.) Jerry Prosser, the series editor, adapts this one. It's a very disturbing tale about how the two sons of the father avenge the one sister who nearly escaped abuse. They take revenge because they thought the father had ended the cycle; he was actually waiting until she was older and more mature and on the edge of completely moving onto a life away from all the horror. I don't feel this review has done this comic justice. In fact, I wish there was another word for this than comic. It's a visualization of the reality that's around us that we don't often see, either because it's behind closed doors or because we turn the other way. You should take a look. Honestly. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Classic Vachss:17 Years Later, This Work Still Stands Up
Andrew Vachss's and Dark Horse's (publishers) Hard Looks series is as mind-bendingly moralistic as it was when first published in 1992. And the contributors' list reads like a veritable who's who of comics:Dave Gibbons (of Green Lantern & Watchmen fame), Tim Bradstreet (a fairly new name in `92 - Punisher wasn't on his resume then -, now a well-known), Rick Magyar (inker extraordinaire, here doing it all on his own), Neal Barrett, Jr. (The Hereafter Gang scribe), Gary Gianni (19th century drawing on very, very refined steroids), and Pat Brosseau (where has the guy not worked?). The cover is all Bradstreet, a wet, splotchy street that's a walkway to porn shops (the hit features? "Another 48 Inches" and "Tools of the Nile") and looking at you is a guy in a dirty overcoat smoking a cigarette and holding a Raggedy Ann doll; he looks like a police detective fueled by righteous anger (and let's hope that's what he is).WARNING:CAREFULLY CONTROLLED SPOILERS HEREAFTER. The first story is a "biter bit" story (I'll leave it at that so as not to ruin the newness of it for a new reader), adapted and illustrated completely by Dave Gibbons. "Statute of Limitations" was, back then, a new prose story and original to the DH series (later reprinted in Vachss's short story collection Born Bad). It has one main illustration by Bradstreet (Cross threateningly posed, awaiting anything coming his way) and a small rendering of a dragon at story's end. The story itself questions whether there is such a thing as righteous revenge, and by story's end I was thinking so. But the last line of the story is brutal once we learn what the woman will have to go through herself -being victimized (sort of) again -to get it. In other words, nothing's free. "The Unwritten Law" is not a weak story, but is the weak link here. But the moral of it is how one young man's natural inclinations get him killed because he is being played by a team much smarter and vicious than himself. He literally becomes a side note to their money but not moral profit. "Hostage" is a serious and, perhaps, controversial tale in that to believe the story we can't deny the violent crimes that have been perpetuated by veterans who, perhaps through no fault of their own, are trained in nothing but violence and then reintroduced to civilian life, so who's to say the killer/death instinct is dead and won't prey on the defenseless. It investigates notions of harsh justice and the gray area in police procedures (without being a cliché and/or campy police procedural). All in all, these are hardnosed (definitely for mature audiences; maybe teenagers but no one younger, I wouldn't think) tales that are these times' cautionary tales that twist its reader to view a dark moral side that doesn't exactly come naturally but is understandable once you get there. This is also the good old Dark Horse days, most everything in black and white, when the had the guts to call their letter column "Flogging a Dead Horse"! Jerry Prosser has a great essay at the back of the issue about how the series was conceived and how it came together. He reminds us that these stories are a look at a system that protects victimizers more than victims, how a blind eye truly leads to ignorance, and then has fun telling us about the artists and writers beating his door down to become part of the project (part of the DH deal nicely included proceeds going to Tri-County Youth Services Consortium). ABOUT PRICES:DO NOT PAY UPWARDS OF $10 FOR THESE COMICS, well, unless you just can't find them any other way. I can't say they're not worth it. People at a site or two or gouging folks. Keep looking and find fair prices. I'd list fair sites, but Amazon doesn't allow it. I bought these in bits and pieces and accumulated a full collection fairly cheaply. It would be nice if DH would reprint the entire collection in tpb or hardcover; that would take care of the gouging. To sum up:this is a great, gritty, thoughtful, introspective comic with a sociological and moral bite.

... Read more

Product Description
Der Erwerb des Buches enthält gleichzeitig die kostenlose Mitgliedschaft im Buchklub des Verlags zum Ausprobieren - dort können Sie von über einer Million Bücher ohne weitere Kosten auswählen. Das Buch besteht aus Wikipedia-Artikeln: Carl Barks, Wilhelm Busch, Andrew Vachss, René Goscinny, Max Goldt, Don Rosa, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, John Byrne, Stan Lee, Floyd Gottfredson, Lewis Trondheim, Dennis O'Neil, Grant Morrison, Dan Jurgens, Alan Grant, Doug Moench, Enzo Biagi, Jean-Michel Charlier, Volker Reiche, George Pérez, Diane Duane, Jeph Loeb, Charles Burns, Tony Strobl, Ralf Palandt, Jerry Siegel, Jack Cole, Robert Kanigher, Steve Niles, Nicholas Peter Dallis, Frank Miller, Alfred von Meysenbug, Jacques Martin, Frédéric Boilet, Peter O'Donnell, Keith Giffen, Heribert Schulmeyer, Joe Simon, Paul Dini, Warren Ellis, Schwarwel, Mort Weisinger, Len Wein, André Linke, Daniel Knauf, Jaroslav Foglar, Garth Ennis, Peter M. Lenkov, Felix Weber, Daniel Henrotin, Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Marv Wolfman, Raoul Cauvin, Mark Waid, Rodolphe, Rochus Hahn, Michel Régnier, Adolf Kabatek, Fred Gallagher, Jean Marc DeMatteis, Larry Hama, Louise Simonson, Carlos Pacheco, William Messner-Loebs, Sjón, Mark Millar, Julia Drinnenberg, Paul Kupperberg, Manu Larcenet, Geoff Johns, Brian Azzarello, Reinhold Reitberger, Thomas Ballhausen, Ron Marz, Devin Grayson, Mittéï, Jerry Ordway, Jean-David Morvan, Mark Schultz, Peter Milligan, Tülay Sözbir-Seidel, Daniel Pennac, Darwyn Cooke, Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, Spain Rodriguez, Mike W. Barr, Rob Liefeld, J. Torres, Jim Woodring, Peter David, Roger Stern, Joe Gill, John Broome, Ryō Mizuno, Jane Espenson, Steve Englehart, Paul Levitz, Bill Willingham, Elliot S! Maggin, Christopher Priest, Archie Goodwin, Dan Abnett, Brad Meltzer, Al Capp, Max Allan Collins, Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, Mark Evanier, Robert Loren Fleming, Gail Simone, Buronson, Bob Kane, Joe Kelly, Chuck Dixon, Jean Van Ha...http://booksllc.net/?l=de&id=18623 ... Read more

Product Description
Trophy hunters from another world, hiding in plain site, drawn to heat and conflict. A historical scourge, lethal specters, powerful, savage, merciless. Utilizing their feral instincts and otherworldly technology in the sole pursuit of the most dangerous game . . . Man. Whether haunting the blazing deserts of the Southwest, stalking the claustrophobic woods of the Pine Barrens, or infiltrating a maximum security prison, the Predators take no prisoners and leave only death in their grisly wake. But even these bestial killing machines can meet their match when men swallow their fear and channel their own primal rage . . . and the hunter becomes the hunted! Dark Horse Comics set the comics industry on its ear with its comics expansion of the Predator mythos, comics so true to the spirit of the Fox film blockbuster that concepts were incorporated into the Predator screen universe. Predator Omnibus Volume 2 continues the complete presentation of these comics classics-some never before collected-featuring over 400 gripping story pages in full color, penned by a who's-who of top writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

About as good as the first volume
The first volume is good with it's initial Predator trilogy of novels being laid out in order, though a couple of the shorts that came after were a little disappointing. Volume 2 is about as good, though one of the main offerings is less than good.

Big Game 4/5
I once read in another review that "Big Game is Predator" which is a perfect way to put it. It captures some of the first movie's inventiveness and then adds its own creativity, but doesn't stray too far from what we are looking for, which is a suspenseful and interesting Predator story where the Predator is actually the monster. It does go into government and politics a little with its heavy military involvement, but it doesn't detract too much.

God's Truth 4/5
A B&W short that's pretty inventive. The perspective changes near the end revealing that it was narrated by someone else than what you expect.

Race War 2/5
Race War is just not good. It's long and really uninteresting, plus the main Predator doesn't even show up that often. It's a really really really forgettable story, I barely remember what it was about. Most of it takes place in a prison. It's just a missed opportunity.

The Hunted City 3/5
Takes place during the 1930's involving gangsters shooting each other and whatnot. The Predator jumps in and creates havoc.

Blood on Two-Witch Mesa 4/5
A sequel to Big Game involving the main character (I forget his name) listening to a story his grandfather tells about his ancestors encountering a Predator in the old days of cowboys and Indians.

Invaders from the Fourth Dimension 3/5
A decent story about a small child being able to see a cloaked Predator through 3-D glasses in the 1950's. It's a little strange, but entertaining which makes it worth a read.

1718 4/5
An interesting story behind the pistol from the end of Predator 2 involving some pirates getting into a fight with each other and a Predator jumping in to finish it.

I recommend this volume to fans of AvP, but you may get some enjoyment out of it if you're just a casual comic reader.

great collection!!
I don't know what I'd do without these omnibus collections!

Great value and great price, I give the Predator omnibus vol 2 a five star rating.

My highest recommendation! 5 stars! If you get a chance check out the other omnibus collections that are available, they are mostly pretty good stuff.. and the price is unbeatable for the content!

5 stars! ... Read more