Comics
Review: “MPH” #1
Reviewed by – Your Friendly Neighborhood Brady
Remember Mark Millar? He blazed trails for big comic titles like “Ultimates” and “The Authority”, and then started making his own titles. And thus Millarworld was born and grown and grown. The latest world has had only one superhuman and he went real fast. All that plus speed, drugs, double-crosses, and vision boards. I think “MPH” #1 is the first leg of what is looking like a good run.
WRITTEN BY: Mark Millar
ART BY: Duncan Fegredo
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: 21 May 2014
I like going fast. I think everyone has imagined that. That’s why car chases are fun to watch. If you’ve ever watched any NASCAR races or highlights, you know the best parts are the crashes. Heaven forbid anyone gets hurt…but it’s so thrilling to see it when they happen. I think writer Mark Millar is going to take down a similar track.
Our new speedster, Roscoe Rodriguez, was mapping out his life plan with his sweetheart. Sounds sweet, right? It’s the fact that he’s a middle-of-the-pack thug working for a Michigan gangster that makes his dream boarding so fascinating and bizarre. You never really think about gangsters and their drug runners having bigger dreams than being criminals, do you? There are plenty of ways for this story to go into. Knowing Millar’s past work, I think this will be a story of merriment and hopefully some carnage too.
The art by Duncan Fegredo is granular and grubby exactly when it needs to be. This world isn’t polished and vivid. I’m reminded of Sean Phillips’ Sleeper and Criminal works in the best ways. Nothing looks like it’s out of place. I’m already imagining these pages as storyboards for the movie version coming soon to a theater near you.
I think “MPH” #1 is on a good pace to show us a how much trouble and fun a minor thug can get into with major super speed. While the pace started slowly, I imagine that’s the plan. I predict this series will pick up momentum and hopefully finish well.
IDW Dark and Paramount recently joined forces to launch limited comic book tales set in the worlds of Smile and A Quiet Place, and we’ve learned today that they’ll continue hanging around in those franchise universes with two brand new limited series tales.
Entertainment Weekly has exclusively revealed this afternoon that IDW Dark’s Any Given Smile debuts in September, while A Quiet Place: Rising Tides arrives in November.
First up, from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Pablo Collar, Any Given Smile puts a football-themed twist on Parker Finn’s successful Smile movie franchise.
The five-part limited series is “set in January 1995, during the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The rising superstar of the Sharks, backup quarterback Dupree, is feeling the pressure from his teammates, the fans, and also the city’s gambling underworld, to whom he owes a considerable debt. Meanwhile, a sports journalist investigates a string of suicides that may be connected to the big game. At the very least, they are connected to a sinister entity that preys on the minds of its victims.”
From writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides will also be a five-issue limited story. The comic book tale “brings the creatures to the Florida Keys, where a father-daughter duo attempt to survive on water in a houseboat.”
EW further details, “This tense family reunion coincides with the arrival of the vicious creatures that hunt through sound. Grace and her dad find safety on the open ocean, but she’ll have to make landfall sooner or later; the father’s oxygen tank and their supplies are running low, while a hurricane swiftly approaches.”
Learn more about both comic books over on Entertainment Weekly.
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