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Comic Review: Die Hard Year One #8
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Guy_Jen   |  

Die Hard Year One #8Die Hard Year One #8
Written by Howard Chaykin
Art by Gabriel Andrade Jr.
Colors by Stephen Downer
Letters by Ed Dukeshire
BOOM! Studios
Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 14, 2010

John McClane saves the day again in Die Hard Year One #8. As the blackout rages on in New York City John wraps up the hostage situation in true McClane fashion. The real villains behind the blackout and their real plans are revealed. McClane and his partner Detective Olga Cruces work to find the criminals responsible for the blackout and stop the bank robbery in progress. As a nice taste of what is to come there is a nice juicy peek into McClane’s future on the last page.

Howard Chaykin continues to blow me away with one of the best licensed properties out there. The twists and turns that usually are easily seen in a prequel work very well in every issue of this comic. Chaykin is great at taking what is essentially an action movie and splitting it into multiple issues while keeping just enough exposition and action in each one of the issues. I continue to put this book at the top of my stack every week, excited to see what happens next in McClane’s first year on the Force and how he meets all of his friends and foes before the movies happen.

Gabriel Andrade Jr. also continues to blow me away with the perfect amount of familiarity to the property without being a specific photo reference. Andrade captures the setting beautifully in every issue, which is very nicely complemented by Stephen Downer‘s colors. One thing that did make me laugh was there was a newspaper on one of the pages and the words in the actual article were all gibberish. Not really much of a complaint considering you can barely see the words anyway, but it just made me laugh to see under the headlines was a bunch of typed gibberish.

Overall this series has been extremely strong and fans of the movies will definitely appreciate this comic. I personally will continue to pick this up in issues because it is a great monthly dose of action to spice up my comics. I suggest everyone else pick this up and if you haven’t started reading it yet, go check out the first trade and see what you think.

RATING:
Die Hard Year One #8: 4 out of 5
The series pulls in a well deserved 4.5 out of 5

2 Comments »

  1. I’ve unexpectedly enjoyed this series a great deal, the second arc even more than the first, and think Chaykin did a terrific job building on the character and telling tightly plotted stories that feature a slew of characters. The second arc particularly would be great for a prequel movie.

    But one head scratcher for me — and SPOILER ALERT for anybody who hasn’t read this yet — is what happens to Holly before she meets McClane at the very end of the book. The last we see of her is spraying the guy with Mace, but she’s still trapped in the building and it’s chaos outside. Did I miss something, that she turns up at the police station at the end as a witness?

    Overall, though, one of the biggest comic surprises in a long time is how well this title is capturing the character and feel of the ‘Die Hard’ series, as well as its effectiveness in capturing the mood of New York in the mid-1970s. The best line in the entire run so far has been when the blackout begins, and Chaykin lists a litany of things that have been going wrong for the city, with this being the topper, and says something like “….it’s both par for the course and the topper of them all.”

    Great stuff. Kudos to Chaykin, Boom and artist Gabriel Andrade. The latter has done a good job making McClane look similar to the older Willis, but not a mirror image.

    Haven’t seen any word about whether there will be an issue #9 or if this is it. I hope they can keep it going, but only if they can maintain the quality.

    Comment by TSiebert — April 28, 2010 @ 12:26 pm

  2. SPOILER ALERT! TSiebert I could be mistaken but if I read this correctly she was arrested for setting it all up. Not taken in as a witness. And the cops were taking down all of that team because of a tip.

    Comment by Guy_Jen — May 1, 2010 @ 3:02 am

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