Short book review: Battle of the Planets Digest, Volume 1: Trial by Fire

Various authors, Battle of the Planets Digest, Volume 1: Trial by Fire. Orange, CA: Image Comics, 2004.  ISBN: 1-58240-337-6.

 

 

Genre: comics and graphic novels

Subgenre: adventure, action, science fiction

Format: small trade paperback, comics digest

Source: Bought second hand at Half Price Books, and I am likely to weed it out 

 

I watched and loved the Battle of the Planets animated series as a kid. So when I picked this up, I figured I would like it too. To be honest, this was a bit disappointing. The volume has various issues. 

 

The stories are messy and convoluted. The plots at times seems way more complicated than they need to be. Then we need to look at the volume itself. There is a lot of text, and it is often small and hard to read. In addition, someone thought it would be a good idea to change some of the speech bubbles from white with black letters to black with white letters, which rendered those latter dialogues mostly illegible. 

The art is good, but the small book format does it no favors. At times the art is too busy and cramped even. The redeeming element in the art is the covers by Alex Ross.

Overall, this was not very interesting to read, and with the various print issues it is just not good to read. For now, this is a series to skip. I am not bothering with the next volume based on this one. 

1 out of 5 stars. 

Book qualifies for the following 2021 Reading Challenges: