{"id":749,"date":"2010-08-03T23:19:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T06:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/08\/03\/comic-book-report-outsiders-checkmate-checkout\/"},"modified":"2010-08-03T23:19:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T06:19:00","slug":"comic-book-report-outsiders-checkmate-checkout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/08\/03\/comic-book-report-outsiders-checkmate-checkout\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic Book Report: Outsiders\/Checkmate: Checkout"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_5B85svs4ENE\/TDPIui-MNlI\/AAAAAAABB_M\/4NngE3BJ6_Q\/s1600\/checkmate-outsiders-rucka-winick.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_5B85svs4ENE\/TDPIui-MNlI\/AAAAAAABB_M\/4NngE3BJ6_Q\/s320\/checkmate-outsiders-rucka-winick.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>There&#8217;s a certain talent required to take a character as ridiculous as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chang_Tzu\">Egg Fu<\/a> and turn him into not just a plausible villain, but an actual scary motherfucker.  Some of that is the art, certainly, but Greg Rucka&#8217;s take-no-prisoners writing style doesn&#8217;t hurt.<\/p>\n<p>One of the interesting things about reading the same characters in different comics is seeing how their portrayal changes depending on who&#8217;s writing them.  Sometimes it&#8217;s nice to see underused characters get their day in the sun; I really enjoy how Mr. Terrific is an actual person in <i>Checkmate<\/i>, as opposed to just a face in the crowd of, say, the overcrowded <i>Justice Society of America<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the danger is that you&#8217;ll get inconsistencies or outright contradictions in concurrent titles, but having the same person on the same book for a long time helps minimize that.  There&#8217;s also no substitute for planning, and I get the sense that Ruck and Winick did a fair amount of work breaking this story.  All the pieces come together in a sensical and satisfying fashion.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Buy the book:<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/34809\/biblio\/1401216234?p_isbn\">Powell&#8217;s<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ISBN=1401216234\/curtiscchensfree\">Amazon<\/a> (affiliate links)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"CKL\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" title=\"CKL\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a certain talent required to take a character as ridiculous as Egg Fu and turn him into not just a plausible villain, but an actual scary motherfucker. Some of that is the art, certainly, but Greg Rucka&#8217;s take-no-prisoners writing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[51,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-comics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}