United Free Worlds #3
Published by Devils Due
Cover Price: $3.50 US
Format: Full colour, 40 pages, heavy paper stock.
Writer/Art Director: Blake Leibel
Artist: Patrick Blaine
Cover Artist: Steve Skroce
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This story is more of what has gone on before regarding the civilization of the new alien planet in our solar system. It follows Cynotaur, the leader and unbeatable warrior. First as he fights other aliens, then in his role as leader, changing the way they live. Due to a cryptic perdition by one of the aliens he slain, he the population live underground. The scripting is pretty predictable and does not sound anything remotely like what real people would say.
There are 27 pages of 'story' and I use quotes because there are a number of double page splash pages. What was really jarring was about half way through the story it appeared a new colourist was working on the pages. Suddenly everything went from bright colours to a more muddy style. Regarding the art it appears inspired by the cover artist Steve Skroce, who appears to be inspired by Geof Darrow. While a lot of work clearly went into those pages I cannot say they impressed me much.
There is one page really stuck out for because of a few reasons, first it was the page where the colouring change happened, it had the most gratuitous T&A shots in the series so far and a very bad typo in a word balloon, where "our" is spelled "are." The back part of the book is filled with a mix of b&w and colour preview pages of the next issue, the writers other work and some advertising from CGC, Diamond, and an R.A. Salvatore book.
This is the 2nd issue they've devoted to telling back story and it's boring me something fierce. I'm giving this book a 2.5 out of 5.
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United Free Worlds #4
Published by Devils Due
Cover Price: $3.50 US
Format: Full colour, 40 pages, heavy paper stock.
Writer/Art Director: Blake Leibel
Artist: Patrick Blaine
Cover Artist: Steve Skroce
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More of the same. It just continues on the same story. In this issue the alien world is conquered, Cynotaur looses some people close to him and fights back and wins. The only useful thing about the last 3 issues is it humanizes what could have been a cardboard cut out villain. Not by much, but it shows why he would immediately attack and kill in an aggressive manor without trying some diplomacy first. Especially when it comes to earth people who by his view are 'machinists' ie. small wimpy people that create machines to do their fighting for them. There are more story pages this time but that's because they got the photoshop people to do more double page spreads. The brightest point of this book is it appears the back story is now done.
Another 2.5 out of 5.
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United Free Worlds #5
Published by Devils Due
Cover Price: $3.50 US
Format: Full colour, 32 pages, heavy paper stock.
Writer/Art Director: Blake Leibel
Artist: Patrick Blaine
Cover Artist: Steve Skroce
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And now we're continuing off the story from issue 1. There is a battle between the people of Cretor (the alien planet) lead by Cynotaur against our armies on the planet. But instead of outright killing us all he learns something about us that changes his strategy to try and work out a peaceful resolution. Along the way we get some stats of how big/heavy some of these "Cretorians" are. One is captured and he's 18.6 feet tall. Up until now they were kind of inconsistently drawn and I had no idea they were damn near 20 feet tall. I assumed they were just a bit bigger than humans. There was only 1 colourist this issue which made it more consistent.
We get reintroduced to Barley Douglas the human Chuck Norris man of peace. We go through his relationship with his wife, then the way he raises and educates his kids. In short, there are similarities between him and Cynotaur. If the story didn't make this clear than the cover will, which is a split face cover with each character taking a side. The world calls on Barley again to help with the alien planet situation and this time he accepts their offer. 5 issues in and this series hasn't even gotten to part 2 of the 3 part act. After the story is more preview stuff of the next issue and other books that Devils Due is publishing. Oddly the last page advertises issue 6, stating "The War Ends Here!" If that's the case this will be a very short war. The way the book was going I was expecting at least a 12 issue run.
What's probably aggravated me most about this book was the amount of really good stuff sitting beside me now that I could be reading instead of this. In this market, mediocre to bad books aren't just bad anymore. They're an aggravating waste of time. This is the last of this series I have to review and I'm glad to be done with it. 2.5 out of 5 stars. I cannot recommend this series, especially with the amount of 4-5 star quality stuff that is coming out these days.
Regards,
Jamie Coville
http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com
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