#jesse knowles

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TERRIBLE LIZARD #1 (2014)

Cullen Bunn [w], Drew Moss [p,i], Ryan Hill [c] Oni Press By Jesse Knowles

The touching story of a girl and her T-Rex ... with a healthy dose of collateral damage and monster conflict on the side. When the scientists of Cosmos Labs punch a hole through time and space, they pull a ferocious dinosaur into the present. The dinosaur imprints on teenage Jessica, proving to be more mischievous than vicious. But he is not alone. Strangely mutated prehistoric monsters begin attacking our world. What's a girl and her dinosaur-fighting dinosaur supposed to do?

$1.99, or Free with Membership—comiXology

Ah yes, your classic girl-meets-dinosaur story.

Terrible Lizard is about a fourteen year old girl named Jess who lives on what seems to be a secret military base where her father is under contract to help the military with their cool new science project, so she doesn't really know a lot of kids her age. One day something goes wrong with the “chrono-science” project her father is working on after they activate it for a brief test run and lo and behold, a Tyrannosaurus Rex appears! But the T-Rex isn't attacking anyone, and seems to have actually imprinted on Jess instead, and now wants to protect her. Jess gets the friend she always wanted, but is everyone else okay with just letting a T-Rex exist, even if it does seem relatively friendly?

I dunno, it's a cute story idea I guess. Who isn't a sucker for child/monster bonding stories? I immediately think of the upcoming Team ICO's The Last Guardian and how crazy people are for the premise of that game that it's still being talked about despite being repeatedly delayed for nine years, but also there's more than one instance in just this first issue that Brad Bird's The Iron Giant comes to mind. Military is your typical antagonistic role in this kind of story, immediately wanting to neutralize the potential threat without assessing the situation on a human level. I wonder if Colonel Brickchin will want to capture the T-Rex or use the temporal distortion for his own personal gain down the road?

My first instinct was to like Jess' design, but the more I thought about it the easier it was to figure out that Jess as a character is designed and written with as little feminine traits as possible (jagged hair, beanie, jeans and jacket, I mean she even skateboards which is pretty traditionally masculine), so as to get the best of both worlds: your protagonist is a girl, but boys will be okay with reading it too because there's no girl stuff. I'm not gonna dunk on Terrible Lizard for doing something lots of stories do, but it's increasingly frustrating to notice that writers will steer clear of writing more feminine characters in an otherwise all-audiences kind of story for fear of alienating half of their audience because Boys Won't Read Girly Stuff.

The dialogue is not great and kind of bad in some spots. Comics can sometimes get away with it because you're not hearing actually speak it, but for the people who verbalize dialogue in their head it makes parts cringey. Like their insistence on letting you know the computer voice is repeating “Sequence Initiated” for three solid pages despite serving no purpose and being actually quite annoying to listen to, or when Jess remarks that large dinosaurs make large messes and quips “No wonder they call you a T-Wrecks!” I know I'm being picky, but these are things that took me out of the story, not that the especially generic premise had me really engaged or anything.

The art's not terrible, but it's not great either. I'm not really interested in seeing where the story goes either because I'm willing to put money down that “Wrex” (yes she really names him that) will either die or disappear in the end, and it won't cover the same emotional impact or themes other stories with similar story beats accomplish. I don't see where this story has set itself up to surprise me in any way, and it's a shame because I was hoping I'd find it more charming or cute than I did.

There's just not a whole lot of interesting room to cover for a story like this, I feel like! I don't see how The Last Guardian is going to do anything unexpected either – stories like this tend to have a bunch of cute bonding moments, the audience is charmed by the monster role, and a crisis happens and the kid and the monster are separated, but not before both growing from their experiences. The Iron Giant nails this better than most because it's also a story about the Cold War and treating people who are different than you, as well as a story about having all the power in the world to choose who you want to be despite what people say you are. And it hits a lot of those same story beats, but it's smart about how to hit them and what hitting them means for the story it's telling. It's not just trying to make you cry, it's trying to teach you something as well.

How to Train Your Dragon is a pretty nice version of this kind of story as well. Similar story beats, another lesson about how to treat people who are different than you and doing away with traditions, but it doesn't rely on the death or departure of the monster to pull emotion out of you, and instead says humans and monsters can live together if they just took the time to understand one another.

I don't know. Terrible Lizard is fine I guess if you really love this kind of premise and are looking for another story like this to enjoy, but I personally think you could do a lot better. Hopefully I won't feel the same way about The Last Guardian, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

VERDICT: 2/5

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DOCTOR WHO: THE TENTH DOCTOR #5 (2015)

Nick Abadzis [w], Elena Casagrande [a], Arianna Florean [c] Titan Comics By Jesse Knowles

The Doctor and Gabby are still caught between two factions as modern humanity is born. Neanderthals and Cro Magnons clash, and their actions will shape the direction taken by humankind in the millennia to come! Plus: Cindy discovers an alarming secret back in NYC... and in deep space, Anubis grows impatient!

$2.99—comiXology

Am I being punished? Did I do something to deserve a Sherlock Holmes comic followed immediately by a Doctor Who comic? And how can I make it up to you so that this situation never happens again? At least with Sherlock I can walk away entertained.

That brings me to my big problem with Doctor Who, actually – I genuinely don't understand the appeal of this series. I don't think I've given it a fair chance, honestly, but I've seen enough of it by now that I would normally have a general idea of why people like it, I think. It worked for me and Star Trek, a series I didn't have the pleasure of growing up on but absolutely see the appeal of now. But Doctor Who completely eludes me. Is it supposed to be cornball and goofy and fun to laugh at or with? The way fans get totally invested in it says otherwise to me.

Maybe it's really enjoying the various actors who play the Doctor. In that case I'm at a loss – I typically don't enjoy much of anything based on actors alone. But also the concept of a character played by multiple actors as various reincarnations is a really fascinating idea to me and I want to explore the series just for that idea! I mean the fact that the show has managed to exist for this long and gotten a second wind is a pretty cool feat on its own, right?

Unfortunately my few experiences with Doctor Who have been largely unfulfilling, and this comic is not much different. It stars the tenth Doctor, whatever that means to you, and it's the end of a story that's been told over several issues I can only assume, about the Doctor and his current companion arriving at a time/world where there's a bunch of primitive men and women, and also I think a few aliens from the future/present maybe are watching them? There's a crisis, though, as an alien race has been kidnapping these prehistoric-like men and these aliens are infamous for reselling primitive races to the highest bidder for whatever nefarious purpose they may be buying them for. The Doctor uncovers one of them disguised in plain sight, a conflict ensues, uh also I guess the entire world is revealed to be a simulation in a giant room or something? I don't know, I'm at the tail end of a sci-fi story that's worth about as much as a quarter.

Prior to this comic the only episodes of Doctor Who I've seen were the tail end of a weird monster one which I barely remember anything of, and a Christmas episode that took place on a ship I think? Some wild stuff happened there including I think the sun possessing some people and killing them? Also I remember a new episode at the time airing and this ridiculous sequence where the Doctor drove a motorcycle up the side of a heavily windowed building. All of this sounds cool as heck! I don't mind a story getting weird for the sake of being weird, and I can certainly dig sci-fi for entertainment. But like, I don't know, none of it grabbed me when I was watching it at the time. Neither did this comic.

Maybe it's the way the Doctor carries himself in general? I'm sure there are lots of interesting little quirks each incarnation of the Doctor has, but in general he's a character that knows more about the universe than you do at all times. I never thought something like that would bother me before, but it makes it extremely difficult to relate to him or get too invested in the stakes. I mean, sure, there are definitely major conflicts we need to solve, but if we don't even fully understand how the immediate universe works and our protagonist does but refuses to explain himself until he needs to, then what's the point? I'm clearly watching a protagonist who doesn't care if I watch him or not. And if his many companions are supposed to be our relatable point, I've never seen enough of them that makes any of them differ from each other beyond Attractive Hip Young Go-Getter Woman. I'm sure I'm wrong about that too, but I don't know! I never hear anything about anyone in this show but the Doctor.

I think... in the end Doctor Who is way more interested in fun sci-fi elements and worlds than it is character storytelling, which I think is what holds me back from enjoying a series like that. Also I think my time to enjoy Doctor Who has come and gone – the second wind has all but come down at this point as people move on to other, newer long-form series to obsess over.

Ah well. It's just one of those things I'll write off as not for me I guess. Anyway, this comic honestly isn't that bad. The art is pretty good, the writing is coherent even completely out of context, and if I were a diehard fan I'd probably really dig it.

VERDICT: 3/5

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THE THIRD: REBIRTH #3 (2015)

Steven Prince [w,a] 2510 Press By Jesse Knowles

She's deadly with a knife, but how good is Anneli against a gun? Devan and Anneli fight for their lives as the bounty hunters find their target. The explosive conclusion to THE THIRD: REBIRTH $1.99—comiXology

I honest to god don't understand the setting of The Third at all. Granted, a lot of that is the fault of jumping into the middle of a story, but also this issue jumps back and forth from a galactic government-like setting and a barren jungle island-like setting, which I imagine is intended to be some sort of barren planet. The story ranges anywhere from “I have no idea what's going on” – there's a lot of talk about hunting down 'The Third', whatever that is – and “told a million times”, which is pretty much everything happening on the barren planet. Attractive heterosexual couple are on the run from some deadly people and do attractive heteronormative things, like play the acoustic guitar and bathe in a river but in a sexy way. The woman (who is very sexy, and a woman) gets in a fight with one of the mercenaries after them so the author can prove to us she's tough and cool as well, but the couple eventually get caught. Cliffhanger I guess. It's not like this comic ever gave me a reason to care.

Look, The Third bored me tremendously. Nothing about it stands out in any way. So the rest of this review is going to be me talking about one of my favorite movies, REDLINE.

REDLINE (2009)

Takeshi Koike [D] Tokohushinsha Film Corporation By Jesse Knowles

"Redline" is about the biggest and most deadly racing tournament in the universe. Only held once every five years, everyone wants to stake their claim to fame, including JP, a reckless dare-devil driver oblivious to speed limits with his ultra-customized car - all the while, organized crime and militaristic governments want to leverage the race to their own ends. Amongst the other elite rival drivers in the tournament, JP falls for the alluring Sonoshee - but will she prove his undoing, or can a high speed romance survive a mass destruction race?

$9.49—Amazon

REDLINE is a movie about a boy inspired enough to have a dream. He finds a hero, grows up influenced by said hero, meets other likeminded people with similar goals, and risks everything in his life all because of those moments that inspired him more than anything, the moments that showed him what being alive was all about. It doesn't matter how dangerous or illegal things may get: he will do anything to get as close to achieving his dream as possible.

More obviously, REDLINE is a gorgeous animated movie about future racing, not unlike F-Zero or Speed Racer (way, way more out there than the latter). The plot's a little thin, but that's not what you're here for. The film is almost entirely hand-animated in an age where CG work has only enhanced the productivity and efficiency of animation and spent seven full years in production. It's a dazzling display of masterful art direction and animation and shouldn't missed on that alone; it's a frankly better looking movie than most anything I can think of.

If you haven't seen it, that's the end of this review for you! Go watch REDLINE if your interest has been piqued, or don't, it's cool. If you have seen REDLINE I'm gonna chat with you a bit more about it and talk about some pretty spoiler-heavy stuff, if that matters at all to you.

There seem to be a lot of people who walked away from REDLINE feeling a little let down by the story and how simple it was, or how it felt rushed, or how the ending just completely stops the insane momentum immediately, and I totally understand and empathize with those complaints if it were telling a more detached and straightforward story. And while I think the story is simple, I think it's anything but straightforward.

REDLINE puts a frankly ridiculous amount of energy into building a world filled with diverse character designs and loose plot threads for you to grab at. Asking yourself questions about how certain alien races function or the nature of Roboworld in this universe is practically tantamount to enjoying the story, and if you're not inquisitive about at least some of its unanswered questions I'd argue you probably aren't going to be picking up what REDLINE is putting down. You'd completely miss details like the mob boss JP and Frisbee are indebted to being the same person a young JP is inspired by to take up racing, or how Machinehead is all but confirmed to be Sonoshee's father (this one took me a few viewings to catch). Honestly, you probably won't easily pick up on the subtler details your first time through, and that's okay! It's not like animation like REDLINE's is meant to be viewed only once, unless you're a sourpuss.

But even with all of the loose threads it leaves to distract you, it never wants you to fully take your eyes off of JP. This is his dream, his achievements, his movie, and while there are smaller stories happening with everyone else in JP's life and in the race, it's still all about JP and the race itself. So when we and drive off and leave two world-ending monsters destroying each other and everything around them to inevitably wipe out all of Roboworld, remember: the only thing that matters here is Redline itself. Redline isn't the fate of Roboworld, it's not the resolution to Trava and Little Deyzuna's emotionally-charged feud, and it's certainly not anything that happens when everyone crosses the finish line. It's the race, and the victory, and nothing else. There is no continuation of story, even when there's a universe of stories to tell: JP crosses the literal Redline and it's everything he's ever wanted.

Anyway, The Third sucks. Go watch REDLINE instead, because that doesn't suck. VERDICT: The Third: Rebirth #3 — 1/5 REDLINE — 5/5