Guns N Roses Book:

		List Price: $17.99		Publisher: DC Comics Salesrank: 1349468 Released: December 2, 2008
		Our Price: $6.00
		Used Price: $9.00
		Media: Paperback

Bat Lash: Guns and Roses (Bat Lash) Reviews:
Solid Aragones plot - gorgeous Severin art
2009-08-14 - This one was hard to rate - five stars for Aragones's plot, more than five for Severin's pencil and inks. Four stars for the dialogue by peter barndvold, and three and half stars for the computer colorist. Though this story is an heroic adventure, both Aragones and Severin put it in an historical context. Severin has always been known for his accuracy in depicting Western scenery, guns, horses, backgrounds, etc. At this stage of the game, John is a master illustrator, whose textures, cross hatching, rendering, detailed work on facial expressions and western scenery is just breath taking. This is one of his best, along with "Desperadoes: Quiet of the Grave."

Sergio's plot is steady, solid. The bad guys are vile, and I badly wanted to see them get their comeuppance. The pacing was taut, and at times while I was reading my heart was literally pounding. The plot had some great twists, and was never quite predicatable - whenever I though I knew what direction Sergio was going in, he would switch things up on me. There were some moments, endemic to heroic western fiction, where it just seems like no one can shoot strait and the hero and villain are just born lucky. But, what can you do? Otherwise, the plot was great, the characterization was also excellent - helped along by Severin's depiction of the characters, and the dialogue by Peter Brandvolo, tho his dialogue was inconsistent. There were the times in the story when the dialogue didn't quite match what was going in the art - panels that looked like they needed a word balloon and didn't have one, others where none was required and one was stuck in containing dialogue that did nothing for the story. The depiction of the Commanches was sympathetic, and respectful and fairly accurate in regards to their culture.

The computer colorist chose a good palette, and actually stayed out of Severin's way, mostly leaving his linework in tact. He avoided some of the photoshop trickery that mars so many comics these days - like dulling out the line work around a light, to make the light seem brighter - an effect that only serves to call attention to the work of the colorist, thus wrecking the realism of the art. Where the computer colorist did change the linework was in trying to "enhance" Severin's use of deep space by changing the color of the blank ink lines to a lighter color. So, in some of the panels with deep vistas, due to the computer colorist, the panel looks like two different pictures - a foreground picture that is well delineated, and a background picture that is faded and hard to see. Why editors don't notice how bad this looks, I just can't figure out.

Fortunately, there isn't too much of that sort of thing, and the art is left to stand on it's own, which is good, considering Severin is an artist of distinction and experience who needs no help in creating a realistic illustration, establishing deep space, creating a mood with lighting.

Bat Lash Begins
2008-12-09 - In the late 1960's and early 1970's, DC Comics were know for its war and western titles, as well as for its Superheroes. Sgt Rock, The Unknown Soldiers,Haunted Tank, The Losers Jonah Hex, and Bat Lash shared space with Superman, Batman and the Justice League

Many liked the stories of Bat Lash. You must remember at that time, stories of a character was usually an issue, rather than multi part story arcs as they have today.

Lash was written by Denny O'Neal and Sergio Aragones (of Mad and Groo--Life Of Groois a great title in the series). The art was done by Nick Cardy. He appeared in and out of the 60's and 70's. He had his own book for a few issues, then was back up stories in the 1970's and 1980's. However his origin was never told...Until now

Guns and Roses is the story of a young coming of age Bat Lash. This updating of the legend is akin to a comic book Batman Begins (Widescreen Edition).Aragones cowrites this new version of Bat Lashwith Peter Brandvold. Taking over for Nick Cardy is John Severin, who finds a mix between his and Cardy art style.

The storytelling is crisp and does not seem to be a reworking of old Lash stories. It brings a new slant to this age old comic series. It also updates this series in such a way to leave the door open for more.

Get this now and enjoy this! Then wait until June 2009, when DC represents the classic Bat Lash stories in a showcase edition.

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD