Sam Raimi's DARKMAN movie adaption An odd exception to the 'movie adaptions suck' rule. Sam Raimi is an openly huge comic fan, & after failing to secure a movie version of the Mighty Thor, he opted to invent his own comic-book type character, Darkman. Since the movie plays in a very comic book style format, the comic is enjoyable for reading that way too. Scripted by Ralph Macchio (not the Karate Kid, by the way. but a marvel editor) with artwork by Bob Hall & Tony DeZuniga, the Darkman comic is a good fast-paced read with some really good looking art. Ironically, the bar-code has a pic of good ole' spider-man; a movie adaption that Sam Raimi would one day make. -rg.
ROBOCOP movie adaption Robocop is another character that seems like he should've started out in the comics. But alas, this is an adaption that came after the movie & character had already been established. And like most adaptions, it doesn't really impress. This book was adapted by Bob Harras with pencils by Javier Saltares & Alan Kupperberg and with inks by Tony DeZuniga. The artwork at least looks pretty decent, & the story pretty much follows the movies plot but missing are the fun gory moments from the original film. Hell, this is what probably led to that damned Robocop cartoon. -rg.
T2 - TERMINATOR 2: Judgment Day movie adaption Despite companies from NOW & eventually Dark Horse putting out Terminator books, Marvel somehow snagged the rights to doing the movie adaption to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Written by Gregory Wright from the James Cameron/ William Wisher script with artwork by Klaus Janson, this adaption is simply... terrible. Most comic book adaptions are terrible substitutes for a great movie, yet something compells us to buy them. Maybe because we know the story in the movie is good, so the comics gotta be good too, right? WRONG! The story telling is simply a bad copy here and the artwork is just decent by Marvel standards. Just rent one of the 3 (yea, 3!!!) different special edition DVD's Artisan put out. -rg.
The TOXIC AVENGER