I have several of these and am always quick to snatch them up whenever I find one.
But today's movie adaptation paperback is by far one of the laziest, half-assed publications in Marvel's history. Which is a shame, too, because I love the movie Willow...
The first red flag rises to the top of the flagpole of shame when I realized it was in black and white. Seriously, Marvel? Heck, the Red Sonja movie adaptation paperback I have is in color and that thing is horrible. You couldn't spring for a little ink on this release?
Also, one thing that has often bothered me about these paperbacks is that they are often reformatted from the original comic book layout, meaning that each panel has to be cut out and repositioned on the page, which is jolly good and all but sometimes you end up with pages like the ones seen below, with huge empty spaces, which always seemed like such a waste to me...
Also, I don't mean to clown the artist or anything, but his take on Warwick Davis fluctuates wildly. Here he looks like some sort of Elf Quest reject in drag...
Then we have these brilliant takes on the stars of the movie. Yes, that's supposed to be Val Kilmer in the second frame...
In all fairness, not every single panel is a travesty of poor caricaturization.
And I couldn't help but notice how the majority of the book seemed like it was made up of close ups of faces. But there is the occasional fight scene, such as the below example of how Madmartigan deals with bridge trolls.
Anyway, it's obvious that terrible art and sub-par printing quality is not enough to stop me from plunking down $2 for a book just to make fun of it.
It's too bad, really. I've always loved the movie Willow and have always though that it was a massively underrated film, full of awesome fights, brilliant magic, hilarious jokes and high adventure.\
Not that you'd know it from this book.
But as I mentioned before, I bought a couple of these on my last visit, and the second one is beautiful! But that is another story...
