6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warren Ellis does it again !, 2 Dec 2004
This review is from: Global Frequency: Planet Ablaze (Paperback)
Warren Ellis has made a good name for himself by writing hard edged, witty satires on the superhero genre while at the same time delivering more thrills than the 'real thing'. In fact he has been so successful at this (often subverting from wihin via X-Men spin offs etc) that 'the real thing' has started to look like something from the mind of Warren Ellis.
In this book, WE uses the device of an 'international rescue' organisation made up of extra-ordinary people but not spandex clad superheroes. These operatives are called upon to deal with weird and dangerous situations (virus bombs, dealing with an escaped bionic man, alien invasions that sort of thing) in creative and normally quite violent ways.
The dialogue is generally sharp and the character sketches are amusingly observed. This is a series not a serial and each episode focusses on different central characters so unlike The Authority or Planetary, there is no character continuity or development. This is an observation rather than a complaint because as far as this book goes, it works fine.
This book contains 6 stories, each illustrated by a different artist, all of whom are top notch. Some like Gary Leach don't publish very often but are worth their weight in gold when they do. Its also interesting to see some Jon J Muth pen and ink work again after such a long time (he is more famous for his painted works eg moon shadow). Also special mention for one of my favourite artists Steve Dillon. Probably most famous for his work with Garth Ennis on Preacher, but my fondest memories are of Laser Eraser and Pressbutton from the Warrior days. Total class.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Are you on the Global Frequency?, 28 Oct 2004
This review is from: Global Frequency: Planet Ablaze (Paperback)
What you get in this book is 6 stories about a rescue organisation called Global Frequency. This agency consists of 1001 agents specialising in areas as simple as combat and upto any area of scientific research you care to think about. This organisation is run by the mysterious Miranada Zero who recruits all the agents herself and goes on the missions with her chosen operatives.
The stories here are as simple as destroying a human cyborg for the US Military when it goes mad, solving the mystery of why a town went mad after seeing an angel descend from heaven and stopping the ebola virus being released in London. And that is just 3 of them.
Each story is drawn by a different artist which lends them all a different look and feel, my personal favourite is Big Sky set in Norway and discusses the nature of magic (not stage magic, but real magic) to solve the reason for the angel...
As stated in the previous review there is a pilot being made in the states for a Global Frequency TV show and you can see why. Each of the stories here would make compulsive viewing for and hour - they even have Warren Ellis on board as Executive consultant (which means he gets to smoke and drink in the states whilst it's being made, based on his e-mails and web site).
Overall this is good quality comic fiction and my only gripe is that each story does feel exactly like a TV episode...
Overall I'm giving it 9/10 and rounding that up to 5 stars.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Have you ever prayed that someone's watching over you?, 11 July 2010
To me that's the question that this bok answers.
See, there are 1,001 people on the Global Frequency. You may not know who hey are, they may even be as close to you as possible without you even suspecting it.
Then one day, they receive a call and they may end up being mankind's last hope against something so big, secret or fast that there's no other conventional mean of intervention.
A worldwide cadre of super-experts, from sportsmen to physicists, from soldiers to magicians, from astronauts to historians.
There for us when we need them.
Brought together by the mysterious Miranda Zero and coordinated by young genius Aleph, they face terrorist warmongers, racial haters, drug-crazed wound-worshipping surgeons, pain-impervious hired killers, a direct attack on their base, and an out-of-control space war plan to reduce the human race to "manageable numbers".
Warren Ellis took a relatively simple idea (but so was Columbus' legendary egg, after all) and stretches it over 12 self-contained issues, drawn by 12 different artists, detailing 12 different Global Frequency adventures - the last 6 of which are collected here for your reading pleasure.
No wonder this has twice been optoned as a TV series and you should do yourself a favor and hunt down the beautiful leaked pilot of the first, while you're at it.
The stories are mostly fast paced and sometimes really skinned down to the action, but overall you have little atom bombs of information that takes along time to properly sink and digest and thoroughly enjoy. There's really so much here for you to drool over and ponder!
For comic freaks, there is also the unparelleled joy of having some very rare and very beautiful Simon Bisley pen-and-ink work, Chris Sprouse's crisp and clean and sexy line work (and don't forget: the guy's been working with Alan Moore for YEARS in a row!), Tomm Coker's appallingly underrated art (wasted on superheroes in his ealy days and fully blloming here), Lee Bermejo's awesome uniquely realistic brand of work, Jason Pearson action-packed pages (though he pulls a Cully Hamner here, instead of delivering his usual manga-influenced beauty - and while Cully is a great artist, Jason doing Cully is not really it), and Top Ten's Gene Ha (another America's Best Comics Alumni) deliverng his best work ever, a killer combination of his stellar art and billions of priceless design elements to up the ante and scale and scope of the already astounding final chapter.
This is an absolutely great pacakge, ot to be missed!
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