Guest Review - Kolchak: The Phoenix Rising

    Back with another Guest Review is Glen Davis! Today he gives us his take on a comic based on a TV horror classic:

   I'm a big fan of Kolchak. I read the original books, I watched the TV movies, I watched the TV show, (my favorite was the one with the headless motorcyclist), and really enjoyed the relatively recent comic series written by Christopher Mills. So I picked this one up.

   Bad idea.

   This is one of those stories where Kolchak is little more than a guest star in his own book. This is something like what they call a "back door pilot" on television, where the network uses an episode of an established series to try to launch a new series. Sometimes, it even works.

   In this case, the pilot is about an extraterrestrial tracking down and stopping a secret organization that is trying to create alien/human hybrids. It wouldn't be so bad if it were interesting. Paul Kupperberg has done a lot better.

   The art is pretty bad too. Instead of resembling Darren McGavin, Kolchak here looks like Bob Hope for the most part, with occasional flashes of Richard Nixon.  It's not that hard to find pictures of Darren McGavin, guys.

Grade:  C- 

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Guest Review: Honey West and Kolchak #1

Glen Davis is here with a guest review of a new series that teams up two classic TV shows:

I remain a fan of Moonstone Comics despite their very intermittent publishing schedule.

The company teams up two of its more successful licensed properties in this series: the hard boiled private eye Honey West and the supernatural reporter Kolchak.

While the two seem an unlikely duo, the story makes it work by setting the story during the '70s, when Kolchak was little more than a copy boy. This inexperienced version of Kolchak is certainly novel, and helps fill in the gaps of Kolchak's history. Honey West seems a bit tougher than usual, but we'll chalk that up to the influence of action movies.

The two meet while investigating an analogue of the old Playboy clubs, and find something evil behind the hedonistic veneer.

Not bad. I'm not sure the art cariacture of Kolchak fits, as Darren McGavin was playing Mike Hammer on television during the '50s, and he didn't much resemble the callow youth, but that's a quibble of the smallest category.

Overall, a quality effort that makes both characters look good.

Grade: A-

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