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Welcome back everyone to your source for all-ages comics From Friendly Ghosts To Gamma Rays! It’s the day after Thanksgiving, which means it’s Blacula Friday! Kind of like Black Friday, but with no sales and just two movies to watch called Blacula and Scream, Blacula, Scream. Time to get it on today with Dracula’s soul brother when not out shopping for deals! Aside from that, some swank stuff in this week’s column, so let’s check it out!

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15 Love
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Andi Watson
Artist: Tommy Ohtsuka
With many mini-series these days I’ve just been waiting for the collections to come out. Marvel and DC’s mini-series both become harder to buy all the individual issues as they come out, so to wait a few months and pay only a few dollars more to get them all bound together makes sense. 15 Love was one of those titles I was on the fence about and waited for the collection. The concept of Millie the Model, named Mill, playing at an elite tennis school with a manga-vibe, seemed like mighty Marvel’s take on titles such as The Prince of Tennis or the like. So when I cracked open the book, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the whole ride.
15 Love collects all three issues of the mini-series which, as mentioned already, tells story of Mill, based on Marvel legend Millie the Model. Mill is at an elite tennis school, and has been in last place and is on the verge of being kicked out. One day the washup coach Walt shows up and sees the promise in Mill, and shows he has more than a few tricks still up his sleeve to turn this girl into a champion as she faces her rival, her best friend, and of course as these stories go, her inner self.
The storytelling is great. I’m not one for sports comics usually outside of something like Slam Dunk, but I surely enjoyed this. Fans of the old Millie the Model comics will be pleased with how they still manage to tie in a few modeling aspects into this sports comic with photo shoots and the like. Yes, it is the typical zero to hero sports tale: one part washed up coach isn’t so washed up and saves the day, meets one part underdog who could be top dog if she had the right guidance, but those stories are always retold because we as a culture in general like those kind of stories. As un-groundbreaking as they may be these days, it works here and works very well. The art visually looks like colorized Japanese manga, giving it the feel of comics from Hong Kong like Storm Riders, and if you’re into that style of east-meets-west which Chinese comics visually tend to have, that’s what you get here.
To sum it up, I thought 15 Love was pretty cool. It had a little bit of everything I love, and although it didn’t change my life, the book will stay on my shelf and not go into storage because I will certainly be re-reading it again.

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Coming Up At The Cinema: The Adventures of Tintin
Hey gang, regulars of the column here know we are a fan of Herge’s comic The Adventures of Tintin. The movie is being released next month here in the States, and already has been shown to preview audiences here. Our friend Lawrence was in Los Angeles and able to give us his thoughts on the upcoming film:
Steven Spielberg’s new film The Adventures of Tintin is a sprawling motion-capture action adventure reminiscent of his earlier work on the Indiana Jones franchise. Don’t let the motion-capture throw you. This is the best use of the technology to date. The characters feel surprisingly real. You can see the emotion in their eyes as well as the pores on Tintin’s face — in 3-D no less! The action is well crafted, as you’d expect from Mr. Spielberg, the master of the genre. The action scenes were breathtaking. Especially one involving a chase through a town involving a tank.
Jamie Bell does a good job as our hero Tintin, but Andy Serkis steals the show as the often drunk, always funny Captain Haddock. Children will get a kick out of this film, and more importantly, I think their parents will, too.

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That’s it for this week, a little shorter because of the holiday, but we have a packed column next week for you! See you next, and remember, Blacula loves you!

Drew McCabe
Lawrence Hennigan
drew@comicattack.net