Pilot Season Reviews: Round Two!

Remember all those annoying DC reviews? They were basically just my short opinion about the title? Well I'm doing that for Pilot Season. Here's three more reviews as I put my thoughts down for the Beauty which Kevin and I discussed on the second episode of the podcast. You can also read his review for The Test here.

Misdirection

I sat here staring at a blank screen trying to think of anice way to describe what this book is about and the best I can come up with ishe’s the stupidest race car driver in the world. This book is one partTransporter and one part… well actually it’s just the Transporter only he’sstupid so he’s suckered into the whole “driving for a job” thing. I reallycouldn’t find anything interesting in this book. The main character was dumband I couldn’t even begin to sympathize with him considering he put himself inhis predicament and the worst part is that by listening to peer-pressure fromsomeone that clearly wanted him out of their way. The dialog didn’t even try tohide that fact yet the main character was so one-dimensional that he couldn’tfigure it out. The book ends on a cliff-hanger but if you’ve seen any moviethat has its main character doing something criminal against their will thenyou already know how the book ends. So don’t vote for this book, don’t vote forany of the “Pilot Season” titles since the entire competition is asinine. Also,it’s just Transporter!

Fleshdigger

Again… I sat here thinking of a nice way to describe thisbook, but it really boils down to the Crow meets Al Simmons. Not Spawn, but AlSimmons. I feel for the team behind this book and frankly they probably couldhave gotten it published via Image instead of wasting their time on PilotSeason. I get the impression from their Twitter feed that their hungry for morework and sadly… that’s not going to happen any time soon even if they win PilotSeason. My problems with this book include: Rushed story (due to the one-shotnature for sure), bad character dialog, a problematic origin story and most ofall “Rule Breaking.” That’s the term I’m coining right here and right now. I’vementioned it before and it’s something that Kevin and I always talk about, beit in video games, movies or most notorious… comic books. “Rule Breaking” iswhen you establish the norm for a character and then have them break that normafter establish they can never break the norm.

Character: “I never open that door on Thursday.”

Thursday rolls around and sure enough the character opensthe fucking door.

The rule breaking in this book is as dumb. Our maincharacter works out sparring at his local boxing gym (I guess those are localin huge Metropolis’) and he gets a good one in on his sparring partner. The manthen tells the main character that, “That shit wouldn’t fly in the streets.” Towhich the main character replies, “That’s why I only fight inside with rulesand blah, blah, blah.” Then in the very next scene he gets into a street fightbecause a woman is getting drag around and smacked. Also his phone gets no 911reception… I don’t even know how that’s possible especially since he was in acity park or some shit. The rest of the story is downhill from there. I reallythought this would be the book I liked from “Pilot Season”, but it’s not… notby a long shot.

The Beauty

I liked the concept of this book and that was about it. Thecharacters and the world they’re set in are too ridiculous for me to takeseries and the “hook” or cliffhanger of the issue made me laugh. You’re notsupposed to laugh at it, but I did. The Beauty is the only STD you want to get,overnight you’ll shed the pounds, grow your hair back and become beautiful.That’s what it’s about. For some reason the police for has a “Beauty Department”(stay with me here) to investigate all Beauty related deaths. Beauty has sweptthe world and is now roughly half the population, but they create a task forceconsisting of two people to handle it all? At that point, isn’t just normalcrime? Here’s the ending since I already talked about it on the podcast, hiswife infects him. Hilarious that his wife would go out and get an STD just ashe’s discovering that it’s as deadly as it is attractive, she’s a genius and apiece of shit.

Well there you have it, Pilot Season thus far. I think thereare three more issues coming out so we’ll probably just bundle them alltogether again unless one of them really stands out… expect that bundle.