Concrete: Fragile Creature - Paul Chadwick
In this series, Concrete has been hired to help with special effects for a movie: the director is saving money by using his immense strength to power vehicles, throw massive objects around, and even to create an elephant-centaur creature. The movie itself, "Rulers of the Omniverse," is something of a spoof of the "Masters of the Universe," with the He-man-like hero played by a Schwarzenegger wanna-be. Chadwick had worked on a movie prior to writing this book, and he manages to skewer Hollywood while also showing its good side, from all the political and financial hoop-jumping to the camraderie on the sets. Concrete is still one of my favorite comic book characters, due in large part to Chadwick's superb writing. His characters (Concrete especially) have a great depth to them, and there is a lot of thought in all of his stories. In this book, Chadwick tried some different illustration techniques, and I found that I preferred his usual style, but the drawings are still excellent.

Fed to jonathan's brain | August 20, 2003