Authors: Yann & Eric Henninot
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 56 colour pages
£9.99 incl VAT
ISBN: 9781849182744
Publication: June 2024
Chicago, the Seventies. Life is tough when you’re an orphan in the streets – and even more so if you’re black. Little Jones, 10, doesn’t even know her real name. All she has is a brother who flirts with the Black Panthers, a streak of cunning and determination a mile wide, and a dream: that of some day enlisting into the Army. A chance encounter with war hero Major Whittaker will change her life forever...
Authors: Alcante & François Boucq
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 56 colour pages
£9.99 incl VAT
ISBN: 9781849182768
Publication: June 2024
Colonel Amos is the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. His current investigation sends him on the trail of an agent of Mossad – Israeli intelligence. The ensuing operation – a joint FBI/CIA effort – will prove to be a difficult one. Not only because of the agent’s skill, or because the colonel and his CIA counterpart Giordino don’t get along, but also because before coming to the USA, Samuel Amos was a founding member of Mossad...
I reviewed volume 1 -Mongoose- here and in September 2014
https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2014/09/cinebook-9th-art-xiii-mystery-i-mongoose.html
and volume 2 )Irina- here in January 2022
https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2022/01/cinebook-ltd-xiii-mystery-irina.html
With those dates you can see where I am going. I got these books and had no idea what they were about and yet they were the third and fourth volumes in a five volume series (I really do hope to live long enough to see volume five but at my age it's a case of "fingers crossed").
I stand by everything I have written about the original XIII series as it had suspense, mystery, gripping action and when I read through it a couple weeks back my opinion had not changed. Everything since that time has seemed to be cashing in on XIII.
Do not get me wrong; the writing is good and the art is of the quality we expect from European comic albums but they are just not gripping me. Why was Clint Eastwood's character "The Man With No Name" so successful? Because we had the story and action but he was still a mystery to us. We had XIIIs story and now it is almost like making a movie to tell the store owner's life story or the guy running the stables when everything we needed rested on the mystery of Clint's character.
What happened in Mongoose or Irina and were they parts of a continuing saga picked up by Little Jones and Colonel Amos? I have absolutely no idea since part one was eleven years ago -I keep double checking that date because I still can't believe it was that long ago. And the other volume was two years ago. Nine years between volume 1 and 2 is not good and two years between 2 and 3 and 4...not good. I do not have enough time to read all the past volumes in this and other series to catch up.
It does not matter how good a series or story is waiting between issues can kill a book. Look at when Fantagraphics decided that Love and Rockets (my favourite Indie book) was going to go yearly. I think I got as far as remembering up to volume 3 and then comic shops said it was not worth ordering in. Readers lost interest.
I do not know what goes on at Cinebook but I have been the company's biggest supporter since it started publishing but to open a package with 10 or so books and find that there were years between volumes kills the excitement and fun. There are other books I know that are part of a series but only two volumes have appeared a good while ago. Hopefully, Cinebook can get caught up at some point.
At least the reader can buy volumes 1-4 and know that it leaves one issue to get and then the series is complete.
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