Sunday, April 10, 2016

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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1 comment:

-> Ray said...

So this is more a "Phoenix" story (based on the 1982 TV series) than a "Kolchak" one? I wonder if they thought nobody remembered or cared about that short-lived SF series? (They were probably right... which makes a guy wonder why they bothered.)