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I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. I've never understood the point of them. I guess that such a major "event" is something that sparks a fire of reflection in some people regarding positive changes in their lives. Well, that and if you or your significant other's penis stops working. That tends to get people to think about all kind of positive life and general health choices, at least if all the commercials I've seen lately on TV are accurate. But that's a different rant.
So, you're not going to be reading about any resolution for me. However, I figure this is a good opportunity to talk a bit about a couple of new titles that I started reading from Virgin Comics. Now, I don't know about you but when I heard Virgin was going to be starting their own comic company I laughed…hard. I figured it would be something akin to The O.C. and Melrose Place in comic format. You know, things I wouldn't ever have anything to do with purposely. Then I started to see some of the names that were connected to the company and I was intrigued. Still, I didn't see anything in their title line that was jumping out and "grabbing" me.
Then, as luck would have it I saw a title called 7 Brothers was on the way, and it was created by John Woo and scripted by Garth Ennis. Now, I think Ennis is good but I've been watching Asian cinema for years and I was really interested in seeing what John Woo would bring to comics. Other than what I would consider some purposeless use of profanity and odd choice of imagery by an ancient character (a reference to condoms) the story is very interesting and the art of Jeevan Kang suits the story very well. My problem right now is that the series is limited, and I only recently found that out. Of course, I don't know if this will be a story told in "chapters" or if it will all be over once the current run is done. With that said I would say that if you're interested in reading the story you might want to wait to see if Virgin does a trade paperback. Of course, since they are a new company who knows if they'll even do that kind of thing.
Another title I have decided to check out is Walk In, which was created by Dave Stewart, is scripted by Jeff Parker and has art by Ashish Padlekar. The title is about a guy (from Manchester) named Ian who moves around a lot, and I don't just mean around the local area, I mean at least continentally and perhaps even globally. Ian's problem is that he tends to black out at times, and when he tries to return to the life he remembers before the blackout, it doesn't want him. As the reader catches up with Ian (he's nice enough to talk directly to you) you find that Ian seems to be developing a problem with seeing things, and the question of course is whether or not those things are real. Nothing new, but being talked to by the main character of the book is a nice touch that really helps the reader to connect to Ian pretty fast.
While both titles seem to be new takes on established ideas I will say that I do believe the takes on them, and the way they are presented, makes the titles seem fresh and interesting. On the way is a title called Game Keeper that comes from the mind of Guy Ritchie, and as someone who has enjoyed most of his movies I'm definitely going to be checking that out. Plus there is a one issue story called Virulents coming up that I have already ordered that sounds interesting. I figure that between the titles I am reading now and a few others I am likely to check out I should have a better read on what Virgin Comics is about in the near future. In the least I am enjoying checking out this "virgin territory" (sorry, had to say it) for now as it is a nice break from the more mainstream companies. If you have the chance to read a few issues of a Virgin Comics title I'd say try it out, but try and find something you can start at issue #1 with.
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