Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I’m late, as usual. I’ve got two columns to post today that I totally ballsed up. My apologies to the League. They had this ready last Wednesday, and I seem to have some sort of problem with posting material on time. Better late than never, though, especially when it’s a column this good. Check it out...
Howdy, y’all, Cormorant here! Well, I noticed that last week’s TalkBack got a little unruly, but we’re the TalkBack League of @$$holes, and dammit, if readers didn’t give us the finger every once in a while, it’d probably mean we were doing something wrong.
This week, though, I expect peace and harmony to reign, because as I look down upon our reviews, I see that representatives from every one of the major companies are sitting side by side, and that’s gotta mean something! Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Oni…even the indies make a showing with Lizzybeth’s review of CATHEDRAL CHILD and CLOCKWORK ANGELS! What’s that? You want to know where Dreamwave and CrossGen are represented? Fool, I said the major companies. If I were to liken this peaceful gathering to the street gang truce at the beginning of Walter Hill’s cult classic action film, THE WARRIORS, Dreamwave and CrossGen would be the Orphans, the gang that didn’t even get invited. Unnecessarily harsh? Naw, I just wanted to work in a reference to THE WARRIORS, one of the greatest “guy” movies of all time.
So, uh, anyway…reviews:
THE BLACKBURNE COVENANT # 1
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by Stefano Raffaele & Elena Sanjust
Published by Dark Horse Comics
Reviewed by Buzz Maverik
Boy, is this the comic for me! Well, almost!
We've got a horror story from writer Fabian Nicieza (X-STUFF, THE NEW WARRIORS, THUNDERBOLTS) and artist Stefano Raffaele. It's about a novelist named Richard Kaine who writes a bestseller called Wintersong about a medieval coven of witches and the Inquistor-goth guys who destroy them. The novel’s a colossal hit and Rich is on the cover of PEOPLE MAGAZINE. One evening, while drinking a snifter of Remy Martin, Rich trips like a character in a pitch for a SWAMP THING relaunch. His publisher dies in a mysterious accident and Rich can't even pay off his bar tab (while I like Rich as a character, I can't respect anyone who can't hold the obviously sissy-amount of liquor he downed! Gimme a character whom they won't let into a bar because he doesn't leave enough for everyone else! ) .
In the comic, there are intermittent chat room transcripts about whether Rich's book is real. Rich is attacked by a guy with a taser who is wearing a crest from his supposedly fictional book. Powerful forces are gathering around Rich and he ends up confronted with a scene of grisly horror.
I liked this book because Nicieza is writing mature characters without worrying about making them likable. There's sex and violence but that's not what makes the book suitable for mature readers. We've got a sophisticated character confronted by an ancient, blood drenched mystery.
Stefano Raffaele's art is realistic and understated. He enhances it with faux-pages of text and magazine covers to make it stand out. The characters look like glamorous people, not cartoon characters drawn by artists with no sense of anatomy. Think Neal Adams or David Mazzuchelli . The whole thing reminded me of a really cool black and white Warren Magazine from the '70s. Of course, THE BLACKBURNE COVENANT is in color.
Why is this only almost the comic for me? I read lots of books and Wintersong doesn't strike me as NEW YORK TIMES bestseller material. And I can't imagine first time author Richard getting on the cover of PEOPLE. King, Grisham and Rowling don't get the cover of PEOPLE. Stuff like this doesn't ruin the comic, but it's the kind of unrealistic touch that is always a little irritating when one form of media tries to portray another.
Well worth picking up the second issue.
CATHEDRAL CHILD: TEXAS STEAMPUNK 1
CLOCKWORK ANGELS: TEXAS STEAMPUNK 2
Lea Hernandez
Cyberosia Publishing
reviewed by: Lizzybeth
I’m taking a poll. What do you think is the best way to convince girls to read comics? Is it:
A) Tie them to a chair and hold issues of X-Men in front of their taped-open eyes until they relent, because goodness knows they won’t read them otherwise.
B) Put in a crossover with Barbie. Girls like Barbie. Right? No, wait, I mean Hello Kitty! Yeah, that’ll do it.
C) No, wait, I’ve got it. Introduce a line of manga-influenced comics. Listen, girls eat those suckers up like candy for some reason. It must be the big-eyes thing. So take a bunch of existing characters, saucer up those eyes, and relaunch their titles. Throw in one of those “bad girls” in skin-tight sexy outfits, to give those girls a role model - make the other comics about boys with giant robots, male superheroes, and anti-hero alien symbiotes. Put a bunch of hot artists on board and encourage them to imitate the Japanese style. Yeah, when girls see the sexy pinup pictures on the cover, or those coooool drawings of a man in spandex on fire, they will become loyal lifelong comics readers.
D) Or, here’s a thought: learn more from Japanese manga than how to draw spiky hair. Such as, for instance, how to build a large, loyal, mainstream fanbase by providing a wide variety of stories that could appeal to people of different ages and genders. Instead of mildly altering the art style and shopping around the same old characters that girls have been steadily ignoring for decades, why not create new stories and characters that would appeal to girls? Maybe some of them could be written and drawn by actual women? And instead of playing to the power fantasies and sexual appetites of male readers and trying to convince everyone else to join in, focus on some female-character-driven adventures, interpersonal relationships, or even just the kind of power fantasies and sex appeal that would speak to girls?
E) Let’s face it, the well-distributed comics aren’t going to make a real move towards appealing to girls for fear of losing their existing fanbase. So the best thing to do for now is to introduce girls to those creators who are out there creating comics that speak to them directly. Like, for example, the newly opened Girlamatic site, which is offering regularly updated online comic goodness by and for the ladies. Or you could give them a comic by Lea Hernandez, who by creating full-length volumes of imaginative fantasy aimed specifically at girls, is making a unique place for herself in today’s comics marketplace.
F) I don’t really care, and lets get to the review portion of this review, shall we?
CATHEDRAL CHILD and CLOCKWORK ANGELS are the first two volumes of Lea Hernandez’s ongoing “American Manga” series TEXAS STEAMPUNK, originally published by Image and recently re-released by Cyberosia. Hernandez works in a lexicon developed by Japanese shojo manga (their comics for girls), but she’s adapted it to her own American sensibility. Both stories take place in 1897 Texas, and feature a mission-town called Heaven, a ruthless businessman named Parrish, a sinister physician named Sacerdote, and the native villagers referred to as the Cuerpo de Cathedral. The two stories fit into each other nicely, with a few overlapping characters, but can also stand alone as complete stories with distinct flavors.
The artwork favors the more useful elements of the shojo style, the exaggerated features (including, yes, the eyes) used for the proper purpose of expressiveness, the emphasis on design for both the scenery and the characters, substituting costumes for cleavage, flowing layouts to propel action rather than containing it to a single swinging image, and a considerable romantic streak. Mainstream American comics indulge tentatively in romance, when most significant others are around to be rescued or as a reason for revenge, and courtship is a process of impressing your mate with your ability to save the planet. Romance in CC and CA is more overt, sweet but not cloying, but it’s comparatively straightforward compared to the convoluted plotlines of many manga works. The characters pretty quickly get over the fact of their feelings and get down to the business of defending each other from the malevolent forces of Parrish and Sacerdote, who for different reasons attempt to keep each couple apart. Each book features girls with fantastic powers, but not anything that would be particularly useful in a world-defending situation. There’s Temperance, who can communicate with the dead, Amelia, who does not sleep and can fly, and Glory, whose mechanical affinity and fealty to local customs has a sense of magical incantation.
Each volume, like many manga releases, is a slim pocket-size. At the time of its original publication, the novel-sized volume was considerably less common than it is now, thanks to the increasing profile of manga collections like Lone Wolf and Cub and American publishers like Oni Press who have come to favor this format - a handy feature for readers who want to smuggle their comics around town in their purses.
I don’t naturally gravitate towards manga, so these elements probably wouldn’t appeal to me if I didn’t find the stories so charming. There’s a great mix of fantasy and burgeoning turn-of-the-century technology in each volume, and a strong sense of solid place and time in Heaven and its inhabitants. CATHEDRAL CHILD revolves around an artificial intelligence installed in a primitive computer housed in Heaven’s cathedral, which can be communicated with using a keyboard - an organ keyboard - and which produces a punch-card output much like a player-piano roll. Young Glory growing up around the cathedral learns to communicate with the mechanical mind through singing, making contact through an intuitive leap of understanding that the machine’s attendants can’t manage to replicate. CLOCKWORK ANGELS moves from a New Orleans séance, where Temperance is put into contact with a deceased character from the first volume, to a journey by steam train, to an encounter with talking “wereyotes,” all centered around a story of seven sisters who grew from seeds. While CATHEDRAL CHILD has a stronger premise, CLOCKWORK has a fine cast of characters and a skillful structure, tying in nicely to the first volume. There’s a lot of detail here, with recurring motifs and understated plot points, and the footnotes from the author are a welcome feature of this edition.
This is exactly the sort of project that publishers ought to be getting behind if they are really interested in diversifying their audience, and it’s a shame that the players with the most weight to throw around aren’t supporting this kind of work. It’s true, targeting new audiences is a practice that is often looked upon with suspicion by long-time fans, who seem to take it as a personal affront if their entertainment tries to reach out to someone else instead. The future for comics will be grim indeed if that audience can’t be reached, though, and the works that we will see in this effort can still be enjoyed by the old-time fans, the same way those excluded audiences may come to appreciate the classic and mainstream titles once they’ve been invited into the club.
When that effort produces comics like these, we all win.
SENTINEL #1
Writer: Sean McKeever
Artist: UDON Studios with Eric Vedder, Joe Vriens, and Scott Hepburn
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
And so we have the first of Marvel’s Tsunami line, promoted as a merging of Marvel’s stable of characters with the storytelling sensibilities of the Japanese comics that’ve been enjoying an increasingly warm welcome in the U.S. of A. in recent years. With only two titles to the line thus far – SENTINEL and HUMAN TORCH – we’re a ways off from knowing whether Tsunami can lure the coveted manga audience. If I had to make a guess based on the first two entries, though, I’d have to say “no”. Anyone who’s actually taken in the funnybooks of the East knows there’s more to them than exaggerated cartooning and a heavy emphasis on character, but those are the superficial aspects that Marvel seems to’ve latched onto. Does this mean the books are bad? Destined for failure?
Not necessarily.
Manga fans will quickly recognize the Tsunami/manga connection to be more of a PR venture than an honest attempt to explore Japanese storytelling styles, but Marvel is doing something different with these books. Maybe even something fun. And who wouldn’t expect fun in a story about a boy who befriends a Sentinel, those wacky, mutant-incinerating robotic behemoths of the Marvel Universe?! Sure, one of ‘em once cooked the all-but-unkillable Wolverine in the classic “Days of Future Past” X-Men storyline of the early 80’s, but don’t hold that against ‘em. Even killer robots needs hugs.
Actually, SENTINEL’s “Iron Giant”-style sensibilities work pretty well. Juston Seyfert is your typical, mop-haired high school dork, cut from the same cloth as Peter Parker and struggling to fit in and meet girls. He’s got a knack for electronics and builds robotic “battlebots” from the scrap rummaged from the salvage yard his father runs. It’s a single parent family, but Dad’s an encouraging straight-shooter and Juston gets along well enough with his little brother (whose mysterious headaches, this old-school X-Men geek assumes, suggest he’s a developing mutant). Most importantly, Juston lives near enough to a forest that when he eventually finds the Sentinel and it starts struttin’ around, readers won’t have to roll their eyes wondering how it remains hidden.
Salvage yards? Forested hideouts? Single-parent families? Kids befriending robots built as weapons?! Okay, granted we’re getting into borderline plagiarism of THE IRON GIANT here, but given that writer Ted McKeever springs from the world of small press comics like the high school drama, THE WAITING PLACE, I have some confidence that he’ll bring a unique direction to the title before long. At a guess, I’m betting McKeever will focus on the ups and downs of high school life no matter what eventually happens with the mutant-squishing Sentinel, and that’d be all right by me. Some of the high school elements – asshole bullies, warming up to girls, and finding a clique for lunch – came across as a little too stock, but given the book’s likely target age group of early teens or even pre-adolescents, the broad brushstroke writing seems like a smart idea to encourage reader identification. The dialogue follows suit, stumbling occasionally as so often happens when adult writers can’t quite pin down the cadences and slang of da kiddies, but it comes across as surprisingly endearing nevertheless. A few scenes in particular have some nice emotional bite. One of them has a disgruntled friend of Juston’s likening the school jocks to terrorists and talking about coming at them with his dad’s gun. The other’s actually a heartfelt scene in which Juston tells his little brother how their mother used to sing disco tunes and dance with him when he was younger. Alas, the dialogue falters a bit during a pivotal scene where Juston meets an outgoing girl who just might have some interest in him. One line in particular was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me – if you read it, it’s the bit where she asks him to share his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Oh, the pain of a single awful line!
SENTINEL sports art from Udon, the studio responsible for the cel-anime-style visuals on BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, AGENT X, and ROBOTECH, and while I’m not a huge fan of anime art in general, I’ve liked these guys ever since they made Dazzler look hot again during a guest appearance in DEADPOOL. Their character designs are memorable and kid-friendly in their cartooniness, their backgrounds detailed, and when the Sentinel makes its grand entrance, I fully expect it to be rendered with all the maniacal attention to technology I’ve come to expect from the Japanese.
Final judgment: Of the first wave of Tsunami titles, the only ones I had plans to investigate were MYSTIQUE and RUNAWAYS, and that was because Brian “ I write Y: THE LAST MAN, sucka” Vaughn was helming ‘em. Now I’ve got one more I’ll be watching. SENTINEL has a ways to go to break out of the shell of clichés from which it was hatched, but I really think it might pull it off. This is probably the most all-ages-friendly monthly title Marvel is publishing, and once those manga-sized trades come out, I hope the company’ll give ‘em a big push in bookstores so the series doesn’t slip under kids’ radars. SENTINEL might appeal to the older age bracket that enjoys titles like THE ULTIMATES and Bruce Jones’ INCREDIBLE HULK, ‘long as they approach it without cynicism (riiiiiiiight), but it deserves to be visible to its real target audience, and that audience just doesn’t hang out in comic book stores.
Vroom Socko Presents: A Brian Michael Bendis Trifecta
ALIAS #21
Illustrated by Michael Gaydos
DAREDEVIL #45
Illustrated by Alex Maleev
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #39
Illustrated by Mark Bagley
Published by Marvel Comics
We @$$holes tend to give Brian Bendis quite a bit of grief, much to the chagrin of most of you readers. Hell, I have it on good authority that Bendis himself was phenomenally annoyed by our “Blah, blah, blah” review of a recent issue of DD. Really though, most of our concerns aren’t about the quality of his work; Bendis is brilliant when it comes to dialogue and character. What tends to Bug some of us are the little things. For example, I sometimes wonder if Gwen Stacey and Aunt May are the only people that don’t know Peter is Spidey, and some of these five/six/seven part stories make me miss the three/four issue arcs of old. The big gripe, however, is that Bendis doesn’t have his superheroes do much actual superheroics. Then this past week, all three of his Marvel books came out at once. Reading them one after the other, I realized something:
Bendis doesn’t write superhero comics, he writes comics about people with superpowers. And yes, there is a world of difference between the two.
Before you ask, I am including Spider-Man in that statement. If this were a superhero book, Spidey’d have been in costume for the duration of the issue. If this were a superhero comic, Peter’s conversation with Eddie Brock’s roommate would have been cut to make room for a larger confrontation between Peter and Eddie at the end. No superhero book starring Spider-Man would consist mainly of Peter having a conversation with Nick Fury, then another with Dr. Conners.
That, I think, is the main distinction. With the stuff JMS is doing on Amazing, I always think of Spidey as Spidey, even when he’s just talking to Aunt May or teaching high school chemistry. On Ultimate, Peter is always Peter in my mind. It’s not Spider-Man that’s begging Nick Fury to take his powers away, but Peter. (By the way, why is it that when Bendis writes Fury, he comes across as a much cooler guy than in the Millar books? I’d even venture to say that Fury hasn’t been this cool, Ultimate or otherwise, since Steranko was writing him.)
Alias, of course, is damn near the Anti-Superhero book. So far every conclusion in this book has been awkward in some way. The thing is, that’s what I like about it. We learn more about Jessica from her failures and frustrations than we would if everything was handed to us on a silver plate after six issues. This storyline, featuring Spider-Woman and mutant-based drugs is my favorite so far. I love the two Jessica’s teaming up. I love the glimpses we see into the mind of Ol’ Jolly Jonah. I love that someone worked Speedball, my favorite goofy-ass character, into a story about drugs. And I especially love that the villain of the story is named Denny Haynes (for those of you that don’t know, not only is Denny the moderator of the Bendis Board, he was also my editor when I was writing for GrayHaven. Good times, man.).
The key to this book, I think, is in a line near the end of this issue. “Guess it’s just one of those things that will haunt me for fucking ever.” There’s Jessica Jones in a nutshell; she’s a haunted woman. Her superhero past haunts her. Her sex life haunts her. Out of all the Marvel stuff Bendis puts out, I’m looking forward to the next Alias the most. I simply can’t wait to see how this woman became this way, why she left the life of a hero behind. Can. Not. Wait.
Now, of all the Bendis Books out there, Daredevil is the one most maligned by us @$$holes. Two solid issues of Foggy chewing Matt out? Next to no action whatsoever? What is this crap? You think true to life dialogue, great characterization, and complex problems Matt can’t punch his way out of are good enough for us? No sir, he said in a sarcastically ironic tone. But here’s the funny thing: this issue almost seems like a rebuttal to those arguments. Foggy actually apologizes to Matt for chewing him out so bad at a time when he needed a friend the most. Then, in the final five pages, DD suits up and beats the living shit out of the Owl. More on that later.
The best part of this issue is right in the middle, when the Owl is surprised by a gaggle of FBI agents bearing warrants. The Special Agent in charge is simply priceless. He makes fun of both the Owl and his lawyer Mr. Anad (another name from the Bendis Board. When’s he gonna get around to me, I wonder?). He mocks them for thinking the government would risk letting another Kingpin be created. He pokes fun at how they’re so worried about costumed vigilantes they forgot about actual law enforcement. It’s around this point that the Owl makes a break for it. Daredevil, of course, is waiting for him. And the book goes straight into the toilet.
The fight between these two just doesn’t ring true. Part of this is on Maleev’s head. The art just doesn’t look like two guys fighting. It’s more like a bunch of statues of two guys fighting. There’s no sense of movement to the art, no energy, no power. The other thing is, the battle seems out of place. This isn’t what the book is about anymore. Bendis seems to know this; his heart doesn’t seem to be in this moment. While I read it, I was longing for another tense, threatening conversation, where both Bendis and Maleev’s work excel.
Having said that, Bendis is still one of the best writers working at Marvel today. I always look forward to reading the next issue of his, even if it’s not his best. Hell, he’s about to do the impossible by getting me to buy Ultimate X-Men. Minor quibbles aside, all of us @$$holes enjoy this man’s work. Here, I’ll ask Cormorant.
Hey Corm, what’d you think of this week’s Bendis books?
Holy Jumpin’ Jesus! I love his way with words, but FUCK! More bad action! More Bendis not knowing when to shut up and not explain every-motherfucking-nuance-of-angst! Jesus does this guy need to learn that less is more sometimes! I’m close to dropping all three of these! Some of the crappiest, most incoherent action scenes since…
*sigh* And the beat goes on…
SPIDEY AND THE MINI MARVELS #1
By Chris Giarrusso
Published by Marvel Comics
Reviewed by minininja
I loved Spidey And The Mini Marvels so much I read it twice! Yeah, that's right, TWICE. Most of the comic books I buy will only pass for toilet paper but it just doesn't feel right these days - damn glossy paper. At least newsprint was absorbent.
Calvin and Hobbes but with superheroes - that's the Mini Marvels in a nutshell. The cute kid factor in the design of the characters and the bright colors gives the title an all-ages feeling to it, while delivering a dose of witty humor and Looney Tunes-style wackiness.
Writer/penciller/inker Giarrusso has great comedic timing and his simple art style is a perfect complement. I laughed at this issue even more than I laughed at the previous Giant Sized issue, which was mostly a collection of bits published in the Bullpens.
There are two stories here. The first is “Paperboy Showdown”. Spidey is working a paper route at the Daily Bugle. So is Spidey's rival Venom. In Mini Marvels, everything is very transparent to maximize the tongue in cheek humor: J.J. knows that Spidey is Parker and that Venom is Brock. Bonding over destroying our adorable wall-crawler, Norman and Harry Osborn mistake their new paperboy Venom for Spidey in his old black alien symbiote costume and assault him with pumpkin bombs. The Osborns then file a complaint with J.J.: their new paperboy not only didn't deliver their paper during the mistaken attack, but he wants to eat their brains (an ongoing gag with the Venom character's costume). It sets up the rest of the story, which is Jameson trying to get Spidey and Venom to compete for the Osborn household, when all they want to do is be done with the homicidal pumpkin bombing patrons.
The second story (and my favorite) is Cereal Quest featuring Wolverine. The Mini Marvel Wolverine retains the grown up version's short fuse and penchant for violence, but Giarrusso always takes the edge off the character, as he does in this story's first page. A grinning Wolverine holding a box of X-Crunch is eagerly looking forward to the simple indulgence of eating his favorite cereal for breakfast. Too bad Wolvie, 'cause while you weren't looking the X-Men ate it. I think kids everywhere and college roommates after an all-nighter can surely identify with the fury of pilfered sugar-filled crunchy goodness. Wolverine vents a little of his rage on his teammates, and then heads to the supermarket to get another box. But there is no justice for a guy too short to reach the last X-Crunch on the top shelf. Desperately outmaneuvering a greedy mom, jerky stock boy, indifferent cashier and snotty market manager, Wolvie finally wrests control of the X-Crunch only to run into Sabretooth, Toad and the Blob (who look like the versions straight out of the X-Men: Evolution cartoon). Will Wolvie ever eat his X-Crunch in peace? Will he get hit with a golf club by momma bear again? Tune in to find out, dear reader.
Spidey And The Mini Marvels is an all-ages comic that any Marvel fan will love. You're not going to die laughing - I'd hate to oversell it. But you will laugh and to quote Nicholson's Joker, "It'll give you a grin, again, and again!" Funnybook Smilex.
BATMAN: NEVERMORE #1 (of 5)
Written by Len Wein
Art by Guy Davis
Published by DC Comics
A Jon Quixote Tintinnabulation
THE TALKBACK
Once as I was sitting, writing, reviews so very unexciting
The formulaic process so at odds with my mindset.
With thoughts I struggled, brain a’pounding, wanting something more resounding
A review that my dear readers would be unable to forget.
Something fun to read they’d be unable to forget.
I swore an oath, “I’ll write that yet.”
And then I gave a mighty roar, “Since I’m reviewing Nevermore,
I’ll put my pen to paper in an ode to Mister Poe!”
I knew that people must be cravin’ a review that parodies “The Raven”
And though the task of writing would be hard and sometimes slow,
It’s just that sort of challenge that makes creative juices flow.
Quoth the talkback, “Oh God, no!”
“Wait!” I stammered, quite abjectly, “I don’t think that I heard correctly.
To a regular review your feelings can’t be so devout.”
I convinced myself it can’t be true, save for the whines of one or two
An exercise in fun and rhyme should be free of that fallout.
That it would make most readers smile I had but little doubt.
Quoth the talkback, “Cut it out.”
The evidence of their repression coated me in dark depression.
Did they really think I wrote so as to prose-form masturbate?
So in my sad imagination, I pondered quitting my vocation
And because my fragile ego took a beating from their hate
I crawled into a the bottle to my consciousness sedate.
But when I woke I was irate.
They had not slain my grand ambition, I still had plenty ammunition
With which to execute my plan to make them see my dream.
I could review one as a teleplay, or as though I’m Maurice Chevalier,
With a crazy croaking accent that is borderline obscene.
Perhaps I’d lift an article straight from Creem Magazine.
At this the talkback gave a scream.
When I hit their shrieking barricade, my resolve began to spit and fade
And the resolution of my tale I’m sure you can portend.
“I’m tired of your bitter taunts,” I said, “But do you really want
Me just to simply tell you how your money you should spend
Just blurt out if it’s good or bad and maybe spoil the end?”
Quoth the talkback, “You comprehend!”
So I told them about Nevermore, a tale that Elseworlds were meant for.
A story about Batman and a writer, name of Poe,
The two of them team up to solve some murders that are most macabre
The elements of which inspire classic tales of woe
Some of which like ‘Telltale Heart’ that all of you should know
(Behind the scenes is The Scarecrow!)
We really should expect no less from Wein but here he’s at his best
This is not the standard cookie-cutter piece of Elseworld’s fluff.
The writing is just razor sharp, and let’s not forget the Davis art
Moody, dark and textured so that it’s just a little rough
I implore you all to buy it and just hope my word’s enough
Quoth the talkback, “Was that so tough?”
A lesson that was long in learning, my head hung low my cheeks still burning
Penitent and humble feelings coursing through my very core
And so in search of absolution, I offer up this resolution
The smiling face of Stan Lee that hangs o’er my office door
Shall no longer induce me to that writing you abhor
I’ll screw around here, nevermore.
RADISKULL AND DEVIL DOLL
Story by Josh Blaylock & Tim Seeley, with Chris Taber
Art & Tones by Jamar Nicholas
Published by Image Comics
Reviewed by Village Idiot
I HAVE SEEN THE FACE OF GOD! AND IT IS CALLED RADISKULL AND DEVIL DOLL!
Apparently God looks like a crudely drawn black and white comic book featuring a disembodied punk rock skull and a little doll with devil horns. I ask you, who knew?
God also looks like a thin satire about internet dating. And as it turns out, God’s face is only mildly amusing.
Okay, enough of the funny-ha-ha. RADISKULL AND DEVIL DOLL is one of those quasi-independent comics coming out of Image (it felt independent, what with the level of production values) that I picked up on the recommendation of the clerks at my comic store after asking for something “off the wall.” I was very proud of this purchase, basking in a halo of indie cred, until fellow @$$hole Sleazy G told me that the comic is actually based on a webtoon of the same name. I’m not quite sure why, but for some reason, this somehow tarnished the vibe.
Devil Doll’s love for his girlfriend Candy Angel inspires him to fix up Radiskull with a girl from an internet dating service. The four go out on a double date. It goes all wacky.
The level of humor here is pretty premise-based: Radiskull and Devil Doll are two freakishly surreal characters put in conventional situations, and they usually succumb to convention. Waiting for the dates to arrive at the restaurant:
Radiskull: “Uggh. Radiskull can’t believe he agree to this. You promise chicken wings here are super funky hot?”
You see, it’s funny that a giant ferocious floating punk rock skull that speaks in stilted English and talks about himself in the third person would be nervous about a blind date. Heh. This kind of humor is so quirky, so ironic, and so common nowadays, I think I may just be burnt out on it. On the other hand, maybe it was the fact that none of the material was inspired enough to be laugh out loud funny. Whatever the case my overall reaction was tepid.
Nevertheless, I’m sure there are some of you for whom the idea of a floating punk rock head that speaks in stilted English and talks about himself in the third person while drenched in irony sounds irresistibly cool. (Buzz?) And maybe for some of you, RADISKULL AND DEVIL DOLL truly is the face of God. In which case, I’ll amiably say: you go to your church and I’ll go to mine.
SKINWALKER (TPB)
Writers: Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir
Artist: Brian Hurtt
Digital Finishes: Arthur Dela Cruz
Publisher: Oni Press
Reviewed by Cormorant
It’s kind of embarrassing, but the reason I decided to give SKINWALKER a look-see was because its husband and wife writing team will also be handling Marvel’s upcoming NEW MUTANTS relaunch. Now I never even liked THE NEW MUTANTS that much (tho’ Sienkiewicz’s art was a revelation), but I was curious to see if the SKINWALKER team had it in ‘em to pull a “Bendis” – that is, to parlay their indie sensibilities into an adrenaline shot to the heart of the superhero genre. Having read SKINWALKER, an FBI thriller that has more in common with dark Hollywood nail-biters like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS than anything from the capes ‘n’ tights set, I’m still not quite sure. Writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir are solid craftsmen, but I don’t sense in them the stylish spark that made me take notice of Bendis’s early crime comics. Of course, FBI thrillers are a dime a dozen in Hollywoodland, but not so common in comics, so let’s see what SKINWALKER gets right and where it stumbles…
Greg Haworth is an ambitious FBI agent whose profile of a trio of bank robbers accurately predicts their next target. The result is a picture-perfect takedown that quickly lands him in the prestigious Behavioral Sciences unit he’s been aching to join. Before he can assume his new position, though, he finds a curious message on his answering machine from an old partner working an unsettling case in Navajo Country in Arizona. Haworth has a few days to kill before his promotion kicks in, so he heads to Navajo Country to help his former partner out. Enter Anne Adekai, a sharp but temperamental Navajo police officer following up on a case that overlaps Haworth’s investigation. In truest Hollywood tradition, the pair immediately rub each other the wrong way, but become unlikely allies after making the grisly discovery of a skinned corpse that can only be Haworth’s partner.
That’s the premise in a nutshell. With its unusual setting and some creepy Indian mysticism to boot, I was pretty enthused for it initially, but I ended up hitting my head on a nasty visual barrier. It’s not artist Brian Hurtt’s fault. He’s still finding his feet artistically, but he’s got an impressive clean-line style that reminds me a bit of Ty Templeton’s art, and I enjoyed his debut on QUEEN & COUNTRY. No, the problem is that his work is absolutely buried under the muddy and indecipherable gray tones of Arthur Dela Cruz. The proceedings are painfully dark, and I was saddened to discover that they gave otherwise professional visuals an air of amateurishness. I got the sense that Cruz needs to spend some more time studying how light illuminates objects, and I think SKINWALKER would’ve been immeasurably improved were it a straight black and white release. Cruz provides lettering for the book, too, and that was an eyesore as well. Not only was the regular font small, stiff, and a chore to read, but I found that the different fonts used to distinguish the two leads’ narrative captions…weren’t so easy to distinguish.
In spite of the troubling visuals, I was intrigued enough by SKINWALKER’s twists and turns and the interaction between Haworth and Adekai to keep reading. As the pair uncover more and more skinned bodies, it becomes apparent that someone is using the ancient Navajo magic tradition of “skinwalking” – wearing an animal’s skin to gain its knowledge and abilities – on…err…humans. Gross, but admittedly cool. It also leads to the possibility of a killer who can assume the shape of anyone he kills, and since I’m a fan of paranoia stories, it did a good job of pushing some of my buttons. Unfortunately, there’s a pivotal point about midway through the story in which an entire squad of FBI agents is informed of the supernatural nature of the case, and I just couldn’t buy that they or their superiors would so casually accept it. Sure, there’s some skepticism, but it’s quickly discarded and a supernatural-themed investigation is quickly underway. Had the leads come up with a clever way to maintain FBI support while keeping the mystic stuff a secret, I would’ve happily suspended disbelief, but they didn’t, and so the rest of the story was largely a perfunctory read for me. I just couldn’t get past such a notable break from realism in an otherwise realistic crime story.
Final judgment: SKINWALKER has a strong premise and some quality suspense going for it, but is ultimately hamstrung by some questionable visuals, awkward plot contrivances, and an ending revelation that happens too fast to take seriously. I have to applaud the ambition of blending a straightforward thriller with a well-researched venture into Indian mysticism - I just wish SKINWALKER had been a more well-oiled machine. As for the upcoming NEW MUTANTS relaunch…probably still worth a look. If nothing else, I want to see how writers who’ve delved seriously into Indian culture handle the Indian character of Danielle Moonstar, whose cultural values always felt a little clichéd in the hands of NEW MUTANTS creator Chris “Great Spirit!” Claremont.
G.I. JOE FRONTLINE #6
Dan Jolley & Drew Johnson
Published by Image Comics
A Jon Quixote Review
I get the impression that G.I. Joe comics are a lot more fun to write than they are to read. The writer has an almost limitless cast to choose from; scores of characters with distinct looks, abilities, and - hopefully – personalities (and if they don’t, the writer can create one! An entire unwritten life history for each uniquely-paraphernaliad Joe). From that cast, the writer cobbles together a squadron consisting of Snake-Eyes and whoever else is chosen, picks a problem and has to come up with a creative solution to it using those characters. It sounds like it would be challenging and fun, with a lot of options.
For the casual reader, however, it’s not quite as much fun. There are so many Joes to choose from that it’s hard to feel a lot of empathy for an individual one, and even the ones who are written as having distinctive personalities - and Jolley does a good job here with that – there’s still a sense of disposability or interchangeability to them, especially considering the relatively secure life expectancy of a Joe (maybe things have changed during the new run, but in the 80’s, most Joes were essentially immortal). Even if you get to know somebody like Airtight or Stalker or Refrigerator Perry (God, I wanted that action figure) during one of the comics, it might be years before you see him again. It’s really hard to invest in one of these characters who you know probably won’t be faced with a situation of any real gravity (like, say, death) and will quickly fade back into the character pool after the story is over. It also doesn’t help that, 99% of the time, all roads lead to the same place: COBRA.
Yeah, I get the impression that G.I. Joe is a lot more fun to write than it is to read.
Of course, that means that the writers of this current story must have had an absolute blast. ‘Cause I had a pretty good time myself.
If you’re going to steal, steal from the best. The story here is obviously cribbed from John Carpenter’s The Thing as a team of Joes are sent to investigate a distress signal coming from an Arctic research station. Jolley and Johnson then replace the Lovecraftian nemesis of their classic horror template with something…something so purely comic book, so ridiculously logically absurd that it fills my heart with joy just to think about it. I’m so happy to see that sort of imagination alive and well in comic books today and I’d buy the next issue on that basis alone. Happily, I don’t have to. There are other reasons.
As mentioned earlier, Jolley is able to instill (or play up…I’m no Joe expert and this is the first time I’ve met many of these characters) very distinct, very enjoyable personalities in each of the Joes who appear here. They’re a fun, interesting bunch that I wouldn’t mind seeing a lot more of. Johnson’s art is excellent – great to look at, awesome storytelling instincts, very distinct visual style. I’ll be keeping an eye out for these guys.
Problems, there are a few. But they mostly are due to the inherent limitations of a G.I. Joe comic as illustrated earlier. I’m not invested in most of these characters and pretty convinced that their life-expectancy will extend well beyond this story arc – therefore the horror element fails pretty miserably. I don’t think anybody will get seriously hurt and don’t care enough about them to feel the fear they’re supposedly feeling. The COBRA connection…well, yawn. Every G.I. Joe comic I’ve ever read had something to do with COBRA and I was kind of disappointed to find that link here too.
But, really, in light of the smile that this book put on my face, those problems are relatively insignificant. I’m very happy to have found a series with this sort of joie-de-comique, and as long as it keeps up, I don’t think I’m going to be letting go. It might be a nostalgic pleasure. It might be a simple pleasure. It might be a guilty pleasure. But make no mistake, it is a pleasure.
THE CALL #1
Writer: Chuck Austen
Artist: Pat Oliffe
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
In the first issue of Marvel’s new monthly series, THE CALL, a person is violently tortured over the course of the entire twenty-two pages.
That person is the reader.