Going on two years writing about comics, I still find it curious so many reviewers race to be the first to post their thoughts on 'this week's comics.' I get it. Unless you get advances (I do and so does CB and so can you, probably, if you ask) what's the rush? I'd like to think something I write inspires someone to buy Sheltered or Locke & Key. That's not too egomanical, is it?
For me, writing about comics is a conversation. If I got more chances to talk comics more often with other people maybe I would write less -- Jason Sacks just felt a shiver go down his back.
These reviews ran in September and October of 2013 on Comics Bulletin.
Sheltered #3
(Ed Brisson, Johnnie Christmas, Shari Chankhamma; Image)
Sheltered #3
proves when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. The stakes
rise higher and the screws get tighter as artist Johnnie Christmas, colorist Shari
Chankhamma and writer Ed Brisson continue to take a 'slow match' approach to one
of the year's most incendiary comics.
If you've been living under a rock, Sheltered tells the story of (what's left of) Safe Haven, a survivalist
enclave. After stockpiling and digging in in preparation for the end times,
each and every adult is murdered … by their own children. Yep. The Isaac
of these 'children of the pre-apocalypse' is Lucas. His opposite number is
Victoria. She and her friend Hailey are away from the compound (and apparently)
the only two unaware of Lucas's plan when the guns were drawn.
Lucas's charisma has carried the day, but not everyone on 'team Lucas' is … well, well -- parenticide leaves a mark. Victoria and Hailey have holed up in a bunker and although Lucas has the numbers, Hailey and Victoria have … Victoria. Sheltered #3 marks the first battle in the war between the two sides.
Christmas is a forced-perspective samurai. Victoria's gun is
drawn, but never fired; it's a weapon of intimidation not incrimination.
Christmas foregrounds the weapon -- a hand cannon ready to go off – to show the
threat of violence, not the act
itself, not yet anyway. Victoria is the last in line and Christmas makes sure
she's oversized even though she's outmatched.Something is always burning in Sheltered, evidence, corpses, or emotions and Chankhamma captures it in pumpkin and persimmon. These shades of orange appear as blocks of color to background extreme furies like when Lucas explains to Victoria why the adults had to die or when some of the younger conspirators refuse to toe the line. Chankhamma brings the fire to Sheltered's creatives.
Brisson's spare approach to storytelling borders on McCarthy-esque.
The reader receives only what is needed and nothing more. Hailey and Victoria's
story of survival nests inside (is sheltered by) the overarching narrative
about the survivors of a survivalist compound; it's a smart move by Brisson and
adds depth and scale to an otherwise small canvas. I suspect this nesting
instinct to expand to other characters until morale improves which should occur
the first of never.
As Tuco tells Blondie in The
Good, The Bad and the Ugly: ''You
see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those who read Locke
& Key and those who should.''
If Locke & Key is
beyond your ken, I am envious, envious for the blessed moment you crack the
spine on Locke & Key Vol. 1: Welcome
to Lovecraft and discover the true consequences of ''the magic of comic books'' and ''the power of storytelling.'' This review is not for you; you have
some reading to catch up on.
Locke & Key: Alpha
#1 hurts. It's visceral and corporeal, a story felt, in the gut, in the heart
and in the soul. Above all, Locke &
Key: Alpha #1 is not a story one ruins for others. These are, after all,
anxious times for our heroes, as Kinsey says: ''I need to feel something besides panic.''
For this penultimate issue, storytellers Gabriel Rodriquez,
Joe Hill and Jay Fotos choose to fight, to do the 'meat work' Locke & Key has been leading to
since it began. Three talents (four counting letterer Robbie Robbins) at the
height of their powers -- not a line, word, or shade out of place.
Rodriquez's cartooning is on a higher plane -- there's no
other way to put it -- backgrounds, figures, all of it. Each panel roils with
detail, every crease in every hat and hoodie, the sutures stitched across
Rufus's face, and, of course, the terror, the desperate certain terror. The
legions of demons Rodriquez draws in triumph and in repose rival a Fuseli nightmare.
His character work has so much verve (such a spark) it's easy to miss a riff on
a Renaissance master and the Almighty.
Fotos finds Nigel Tufnel's ''none more black'' black for almost every
scene except when something is aflame: people, buildings, 'whispering iron.' His
delicate colors for starry skies and the crescent moon are the story's only
comforts.
Where did Joe Hill learn to write dialogue like this? He had
to learn those filthy words, abject anger and maniac passion somewhere, right?
What Hill does best is animate evil. In Dodge, Hill offers a gift: a villain's
villain.
See Dodge's eyes. The shine? It's experience, knowing it's time
for these creators to slip the long shadows of influence and begin to cast their
own envious shades of inspiration.
Prophet #39
(Brandon Graham,
Simon Roy, Giannis Milogiannis, Joseph Bergin III, Matt Sheean, Malachi Ward,
James Stokoe, Aaron Conley, Lando, Ron Wimberly; Image)
Under Graham's watch, Prophet
has been an art first comic. Often, in the case of Marvel and DC, artist
showcases get ghettoized i.e. Batman
Black & White and Marvel Knights.
I admire Graham's chutzpah (with Image's blessing) to put out an on-going
non-anthology title with an emphasis on cartooning and an unfussiness in
regards to monotonous narrative continuity. For a creator who boogies to the
music in his own head, it's a comfort to know Graham's got the industry juice to
pull off Prophet in the first place.
Art takes such a priority in Prophet
#39 the credits are listed on the back cover. Ballsy.
Oftentimes when nine
artists contribute to a single title it smacks of unreasonable deadlines and
assembly line drudgery. Prophet #39 comes
off as the exact opposite of a work-for-hire slog -- it's an artistic bacchanal
that serves as a family album for Diehard. Each artist takes a crack at the
more-human-than-human robot's life (lives?) across the millennia. Series artist
Giannis Milogiannis counts off (on the inside front cover) with two half-page
panels showing Diehard's current iteration as he noodles on an alien woodwind
in a quiet starship corridor, ''an old
song played by an old robot,'' poetry in both word and image.
Simon Roy, Prophet's
other regular artist and the issue's co-writer, rounds out the proceedings. He
bookends the story with what Diehard was up to before he meets up (again) with
John Prophet in the current storyline. Prophet
#39 is a must see for the five pages James Stokoe turns in and for the one
panel from Ron Wimberly. One panel? Hell yeah, it's Ron
Wimberly, dude's got big ups! Wimberly's cameo has
Iron Giant-type heart and charm. Stokoe, the Woo-ping Yuen of comic book
battle royales, gets to draw Diehard with a chainsword (a nod to Maximum 'Max'
Absolute in King
City).
It's fashionable nowadays to wrap a story arc with a palate
cleanser character study. Where Graham and Roy break from tradition (?) is to
show Diehard's life in montage, a life of war, but also full of families, children
and brothers-in-arms. Graham makes Prophet
more than its reductive descriptor, 'Conan in space,' by letting the sci-fi fly
and allowing creators to create. Prophet
#39 goes the does likewise for the 'old robot.'
The Wake #4
(Scott Snyder, Sean
Murphy, Matt Hollingsworth; Vertigo)
The Wake #4 marks
an interstitial entry in this otherwise nonstop go series. Either by coincidence
or in service to its neither here nor there plot, much of the action in this
issue takes place in a tunnel -- O.K., technically a pipeline, but you catch my
drift. The Wake #4 exists between
stations, between acts. For those 'waiting for the trade' these events will
float passed like so much krill.
If it sounds like I'm damning The Wake #4 with faint praise, I'm not. A comic drawn and inked by
Sean Murphy and colored by Matt Hollingsworth is a gift and should be treated
as such.
When Murphy is being celebrated for his Asterios Polyp, American Flagg! or The Airtight Garage, today's reader will look back and brag about
reading The Wake, in singles.
Murphy's cartooning verve goes from louds (vivisection, an eyeball attached
only by its optic nerve) to softs (pleas and promises). A master of negative
space, Murphy's characters look scored out from the living ink itself instead
of the other way around. God bless you Sean Murphy.
Hollingsworth's colors on The Wake call to mind the look Matthew Libatique got for the inside
of Tony Stark's helmet in Iron Man. Whereas
in Hawkeye, Hollingsworth's art provides
pulpy vigor, his colors in The Wake add
dimension, such is his astonishing range. The shades of calendula and electric
green he uses for the heads-up display of the mini-sub tell the story of all
hell breaking loose as much as Murphy's pencils and inks and Scott Snyder's
words. Also, look for the Easter egg, third screen from the right.
From its start, The
Wake has followed an unusual pace as if it told in some 19/16 Frank
Zappa-like time signature, or math rockers channeling King Crimson. Which is
another way of saying Snyder really wants
The Wake to feel epic.
Amid the action-adventure of the main narrative, Snyder
peppers in Kubrick-ian 'Dawn of Man' type sequences bordering on Prometheus. These flashbacks deepen the
mystery (somewhat), but at this inchoate stage in the overall story these past
pastiches read like a malfunctioning strobe light in an already dim room.
What happened to the steampunk-dolphin from the first issue?
Why hasn't Snyder gone back to the future and instead remained in the past?
Noble savages with laser cannons have caché, but so too does Darwin from seaQuest DSV.
Rocket Girl #1
(Amy Reeder, Brandon
Montclare; Image)
Amy Reeder makes Rocket
Girl #1 go. Her composition is magnificent, her layouts majestic and her
colors sumptuous. Never has a video game arcade had so much showroom shine or
looked so clean. And yet for all Reeder's first-class art, Rocket Girl's story is stuck in coach.
The pitch for Rocket
Girl is genius: Dayoung Johansson is a fifteen-year-old female detective in
the New York City Teen Police Department in 2013. Totally radical. She travels across
space and time to 1986 to, as she says, ''investigate
crimes against time'' and ''save the
world.'' Bad. Time traveling law enforcement officials are nothing new in comics, but few can cop
to a jet pack as SOP. Bitchin'.
Anyone with basic cable understands how time travel is
fraught with confluences, conundrums and complications. Writer Brandon
Montclare makes a smart choice to damn the conventions and let Reeder's art
propel the story. It's smart because there is time (nudge nudge) to explain how
young Johansson's efforts will impact her future and again, Montclare and Rocket Girl have Amy Reeder.
Where Montclare's script gets gnarly is how it establishes
stakes. Detective Johansson tasks herself with investigating Quintum Mechanics
for ''cooking the history books -- going
back and playing in the time stream.'' O.K., if the future is so ethically
bankrupt, so time-corrupt it's the least dystopian future in history, except,
according to the story's timeline, 2013 is the past. What? This 'past as
prologue' is a time and place (NYC) the police commissioner, who rocks ruby red
Jubilee shades, sez, ''Quintum Mechanics
brought back from the brink.''
And the mustache twirlers from '86 Dayoung is so fit not to acquit are nowhere near
nefarious enough in their high waisted slacks, hoop earrings and bustiers, set
aside the taste shown in the comic books kept in their apartments. Perhaps that's
the point. Perhaps knowing the beginning of the end is brought on by the cast
of St. Elmo's Fire makes the future
(or the past) more reprehensible.
I have a lot of respect
for Montclare. I backed his previous effort with Reeder, Halloween Eve, when it was a Kickstarter and did likewise when the
duo first launched Rocket Girl in the
same fashion. I will continue to support their efforts because the work holds potential. If Montclare muscles up to the heights Reeder consistently
achieves, Rocket Girl will fly. Godspeed, Rocket Girl.
Multiple Warheads:
Downfall (One Shot)
(Brandon Graham;
Image)
In between stories about the poetics of love for a partner
and the ecstasy of double penetration from both a human penis and a sutured on ''severed werewolf penis,'' Brandon Graham
gives in to reflection: ''I sure drew a
lot of butts in this comic. Maybe I'm just over thinking it. Hmmmm.'' The
next drawing shows an earlier iteration of Graham as he pulls up in something
that looks like two butts stuck together with ''Bumz 4 Lyfe'' written on the side and, oh yeah, this Graham has a
butt for a head and the car (?) makes 'butt, butt, butt' sounds. 2013 Brandon's
response sez it all:
Multiple Warheads:
Downfall reprints three stories from 2003, 2004 and 2007. In most cases
when a writer publishes their juvenilia or a musician releases demos it's because
the publisher or record company is looking to make some quick cash off of
sycophantic fanboys (the easiest of easy marks). As long as the market will
bear it, so be it.
There's a flipside to this kind of cynicism which sez work
like this shows the artist at his most naked, most authentic and most raw. If
the self-awareness of letting his own ass swing in the air isn't clear enough,
Brandon Graham doesn't need his readers to see him naked or unguarded. He's
more than happy to drop trou and call himself on his own shit.
Reading Downfall is
like watching Mean Streets after years
of gorging on Goodfellas -- a
realization of how the student became the master. 'The Fall' and 'The Elevator'
hint at the charms, goofiness and truths Graham displays in the impeccable King City, his masterwork, so far. More
than Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to
Infinity, Downfall's 'The Fall' proves
when organ smuggler Sexica and her werewolf boyfriend Nikoli hold each other,
theirs is real love. For all his bad puns and sophomoric toilet humor, Graham
is a softy, in love with love and comics.
From the 'this isn't
for everyone category' comes the one story here that requires some
massaging. As 'Sex' and 'Nik' were gestating in his imagination, Graham was drawing
erotica. The result of this ménage à
trois (Graham, Nik and Sex) is a kinky bit of male wish fulfillment only
Graham could imagine. It's not for kids and it shows a helluva lot of asses in
the air. Then again, maybe I'm overthinking it. But …
Letter 44 #1
(Charles Soule,
Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque, Guy Major, Shawn DePasquale; Oni Press)
Letter 44 produces
a kind of Heisenberg Principle of yarn spinning -- the story depends on the
observer's influences -- full of unpredictability and creative chutzpah. Read it as a political
thriller, a first contact story, a conspiracy theorist's wet dream or a clever
reframing of American military policy in the Middle-East and Letter 44 answers.
Artist Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque and writer Charles Soule
imagine a newly-elected US President who learns every decision his hated
predecessor made was because ''NASA
detected some sort of mining or construction operation in the asteroid belt, up
between Mars and Jupiter.'' A team of ''Special
Forces guys and scientists'' were sent to investigate, ''and they're getting close.'' Sound
familiar? Of course, except for the NASA stuff. Yeah. Yeah?
A wordy 'what if,' Letter
44 suffers some from Soule hammering at
certain plot points and an insistence
on text over image which allows letterer Shawn DePasquale to earn his pay, but
forces Alburquerque to draw too many meetings and too many talking heads. The
gravity of Alburquerque's cartooning occurs on board the spaceship where
colorist Guy Major makes the most of CRT greens and greys.
One of the great magical items in a comic book's 'bag of
holding' is the page turn surprise. Letter
44 offers a pair. The placement and plotting of these two moments
demonstrates Alburquerque and Soule have timed their story for maximum effect.
This diamond is not without its inclusions; however, for these two reveals
alone the less one knows the better.
This week an excerpt was published from an interview with
Bill Watterson in the December
issue of Mental Floss, the 'get' of the year, hell, the last thirty
years. He's asked why it's difficult for fans to let go after a creator moves
on. Watterson says, ''… a new work
requires a certain amount of patience and energy, and there's always the risk
of disappointment. You can't blame people for preferring more of what they
already know and like … predictability is boring. Repetition is the death of
magic.''
Calvin and Hobbes works
a different side of the street than Letter
44. What it shares with Watterson's masterpiece is the idea:
'predictability is boring.' If Alburquerque and Soule maintain the energy and promise
of this first issue, 'magic will out.' In a story full of probabilities, disappointments
be damned. Read Letter 44 and revel
in the risk.
(Brian Wood, Garry
Brown, Jordie Bellaire, Jared K. Fletcher; Dark Horse)
(Word to your moms) in The
Massive #15 writer Brian Wood came to drop bombs. Or not. In The Massive #16 Wood repeats the series
conceit: what's the role of 'direct action' environmental-activists once the
Earth has begun to collapse and survival and subsistence have become the rule
of law? Who's left to fight and what's worth fighting for?
And then along came Mary.
When this series first shipped, magic realism was not on the
manifest; The Massive #15 changed all
that. Somewhere deep down in the code of The
Massive, Wood wrote a hack, a Trojan. Mary. From here on out, (it seems)
this series is heading in a different direction and towards a new destination. In
a tense scene halfway through The Massive
#16, Mag asks Cal the only (?) question that matters going forward: ''Where's Mary?'' Cal's initial response
says it all: ''…''.
For what it's worth, the judges would have also accepted: 'what's
Mary?' In a flashback -- and perhaps as a self-fulfilling prophecy -- Mary
tells Cal, ''But in the end … not all of
us will get what we want.''
In the meantime, a-whaling we go. Like the 'Subcontinental' story
arc (#7 - #9), this arc, 'Longship,' looks to ply similar waters in regards to an
emphasis on the group over individual interests.
Bors Bergsen is a broken man with good taste in single malt
scotch. A former corporate bugbear and (pre-Crash) near the top of Cal's
enemies list. Now, Bergsen stands bare-chested in the prow of a Viking
longship, the Stúlka, and hunts Minke whales to keep a small community of
northlanders alive. What's the harm? Do codes count? Do grudges stand? For
Callum Israel, yes and yes. So he bangs the drum and points his ''970-ton military vessel'' at three wooden
boats. The horror. The horror.
At this moment of madness, Bergsen radios Cal and asks to
speak to Mary. Put another way, he begs Mary to intercede -- make of that what
you will -- and put an end to Cal's Kurtz-ian craziness. Thanks to The Massive, artist Garry Brown has
become a master at drawing world-weary desperation. The look he draws on Cal's
face stands at the corner of impotence and idiot resolve. And so, Cal pushes
on. As for Mary? Miss Mary—she gone.
Sixteen issues in The
Massive remains a pillar in this golden-age of creator-owned comics.
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