Welcome to the Second Annual Review-O-Rama of Dooooooooom!
You may remember that last year’s inaugural RORoD! was necessitated by the enormous backlog of comics that I needed to review coming out of the 2006 Wizard World Philly. Well, this year is no different except that it’s coming after the New York Comic Con instead of Philly. And by the way, if you’re looking for a complete re-cap of the NYCC, well, I’m sure they have one somewhere over on Newsrama. But I didn’t write one. Sadly, I was only at the show for about three hours this time, and I came away more convinced than ever that the only way to really make it in this world as a writer is to write a really good book. It seems like no one’s interested in the pitch for my new OGN. What are you gonna do? I wish I had the stroke to smite my enemies for their uncooperativeness, but I don’t.
So as Dick Marcinco would say, “Doom on you!” And now, let’s move on.
Shadow Tracers
#1
Written by Ian Ally-Seals and Vincent LaBate
Pencils by David Robles
Inks and Colors by Myrton Bewry
Published by Rare Earth Comics for $2.99
Shadow Tracers is a strange comic. It’s not uncommon these days to see comics written by would-be filmmakers, but ST#1 seems to be the first comic ever written FOR them. How else to explain a book where all the leads are teenage film school students? Clearly the audience is supposed to identify with the presumably now universal experience of filming a high school documentary, the act which sets up the inciting incident for this story, but I found it a little strange. Still, that perspective doesn’t make this a bad book. I just found it weird. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
My issues with Shadow Tracers were two-fold. First and most importantly, the art is of maddeningly uneven quality. There are pages and panels in this book that are absolutely brilliant. The first page, for example, is as fine a piece of comic book artwork as you’re going to see this year. But then in other places—especially places where there ought to be a lot of emphasis, like the issue’s defining two-page splash—the art is a train wreck. It’s more than a little frustrating. David Robles can clearly draw very well when he wants to, especially close up, but it looks like he needs to pay more attention to the times where his “camera” perspective is at medium or further back. When he has to draw smallish figures, his work suffers for it. His figures get stiff and often awkward, and it’s unfortunate because close up, he does very well. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a matter of personal emphasis, but I could be wrong. It could just as easily be a matter of anatomy and perspective. Honestly, I don’t have a very good eye for these things.
My other concern with this first issue is that it’s a lot of backstory and character development such that the issue actually ends at the exact moment where it ought to begin. In that, it’s sort of reminiscent of the second Matrix movie. The stuff that happens is reasonably interesting, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere, and then when something does finally happen that affects the main plot, then here comes the end of the show.
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: Name writers can get away with slow-build pacing because a) they keep it entertaining, and b) more importantly, the audience has faith that their patience will be rewarded down the line. For example, we’ll cut Bendis some slack on a new title launch because we’ve seen him do the slow-build thing before, and we know that he’s capable of paying it off successfully. However, things are different in the small press. In the small press, no one knows you, and no one wants to cut you any slack, and the only thing you can do about it is to kick ass and take names right from the very first page. And that is why you’ll typically see successful small press writers open on action and then explain what’s going on only later—if they get the chance. But with Shadow Tracers, we don’t have that. Instead we have a lot of character development and a little lesson about how to make a high school documentary and not a lot else. With almost nothing tying this first part of the story to the main plot, I have trouble imagining that it’ll appeal to anyone who isn’t trying to learn to make a film. But, of course, I could be wrong. And honestly, I hope I am.
I
don’t want to make it sound like
this book has nothing going for it because that’s not true. It’s a color
comic with a professional
presentation, and it’s set it
Super Real vs.
The Comic Book Industry
Created and written by Jason Martin
Art by Boo, Jason Martin, Edward Pun, Jim Mahfood, Daniel Campos, and JD
What we have here is a series of funny short stories about the Super Real gang going toe-to-toe with a bunch of presumably more well-known superheroes in Xtv’s Action Arena. This is the third issue of this series, and it falls right in line with the continuity of the main story, but for whatever reason it’s in beautiful black-and-white and billed as a one-shot special edition. Which will hopefully drive some sales. And, of course, being black-and-white, it was by far my favorite issue of Super Real to date, so I guess that just shows my indie bias. Go figure. But seriously, I dug this issue the most, and I recommend it highly to anyone with an even half-developed sense of humor.
What I liked best about SRvsCBI#1 was the way it felt like a jam. Here we have a bunch of super-talented creators taking a break from their day jobs and just goofing off and having fun. None of the gags in this book are think-pieces, but they’re short and very well drawn, and that keeps it moving nicely. Even if one thing falls flat, there are six more waiting in the wings, and you’re bound to find something that you like. And seriously, who doesn’t want to see the super hot Super Real girls fighting giant killer robotic Pokemon? That shit was totally awesome!
I don’t know what else to say. Super Real vs. The Comic Book Industry is a Grade A effort, which I think proves nothing more than that you can work hard and have fun at the same time if you’re working on something that you love. The sense of playfulness in this book shines through from start to finish, making this one a real winner.
Damned #1
Written by Cullen Bunn
Illustrated and lettered by Brian Hurtt
Published by Oni Press, 40 pages for $3.50
Wow. Another book from Oni Press, and another winner. Damned #1 is as fine a comic as you’ll see anywhere. Plus, it’s got a lot of great story for a very reasonable price, and that makes it even more of a shame that it’s almost certainly going to pass under the radar of the mainstream comic-reading audience. Because it’s both non-superhero and greyscale. Comic readers, trust me when I say that you are missing out on this one.
Damned is a sort of 1920’s-style crime noir story with a supernatural twist. The villains and gangsters are Prohibition Era demons, but the story elements are familiar to crime noir fans. And that’s a big part of what makes this book so great. First off, anything is possible, and secondly, when a guy says that something might cost him “more than his life,” well when there are demons involved that statement actually has some meaning. Add to that premise a bunch of strong dialogue and art that is nothing short of fabulous, and you have a Hell of a good comic. I enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed anything I've read this year.
Check out Damned #1. It’s not to be missed. It’s very clearly a Comic You Should Be Reading.
American
Wasteland #1
Writer: R.D. Hall
Art: Mark Kidwell, Tony Bledsoe, Jay Fotos
Letters: Thomas White
Published by Arcana Studios for $3.95
American Wasteland is the story of a
trucker who’s crossing the
American Wasteland is a horror spoof very much in the B-Grade movie mindset, but with A-Grade presentation. It’s not the kind of thing I normally read, but it’s very well done, and I recommend it strongly to fans of the genre. I have this feeling that the goofy horror crowd will find this book brilliant.
Stray Voltage: Redirection
to a rebuttal
If you missed it this week, my friend Tony Laplume—a.k.a. Penchant—the writer of this very site’s weekly column The Quarter Bin took issue with may last column’s portrayal of superhero comics. Personally, I liked Tony’s column a lot, especially the parts where he drew a line from the heroes of Greek Mythology to the superheroes of today, but with that said, I have to tell you that I fear my friend Tony missed the point. Or perhaps I failed to make it. But, at any rate, my point wasn’t that superhero comics are played out or bad or even that you shouldn’t read or write them. My point was that they are typically part of a specific sub-sub-genre of literature, and that with that in mind, it can be very hard to come up with something that’s a genuinely new take on the basic idea. Yes, some writers are doing it, and I even gave some examples, but it’s worth noting that most of the new and/or revolutionary stories in recent memory were not pieces out of the typical comic mileau. They were in fact a part of other genres, but they used superheroes as their leading characters. I gave a few examples of that last week as well, but the two most obvious ones in my opinion were Legion of Superheroes, which I’d call science fiction, and Watchmen, which I’ll say here is a sort of an adult family drama ala the TV shows Dynasty or The Sopranos while acknowledging up front that your mileage on that may vary. At any rate, I wouldn’t call either of those books any sort of “crime fiction.”
My point on the whole wasn’t that you shouldn’t read or write about superheroes but merely that you shouldn’t worry about whether what you’re doing is new and original when you do what you love. Don’t try to make a statement on the industry or on the genre. Just tell your story, and if it’s genre in the tradition of something that we’ll all recognize, then that’s fine so long as you do what you do well and avoid copyright infringement. We’re all fans of the genre. If you can tell a good story, everyone will be happy.
How we got
from there to
“superhero comics are bad” is a mystery to me, but
it seems to have something
to do with my characterization of most superhero comics as
“adolescent power
fantasy” crime fiction.
Which was the
way I got to talking about genre.
Or, in
this case, sub-sub-genre. But
now look,
I didn’t make up that term.
I merely
bought into it as an apt descriptor of what superhero comics under the Comics Code Authority mostly were and
in large part still are today, at least in
I don’t want to belabor the point (too late for that, no?), but the basic idea of the adolescent power fantasy is that most adolescents live in a state of frustration. They FEEL like adults, but they don’t have the powers and responsibilities of adults, and so reading about characters with superpowers and responsibilities BEYOND those of most adults becomes a kind of an escape for them. Readers see themselves in the role of the hero, and they can imagine themselves outside the world of their boundaries. They can get free of all the adults and their stupid rules. I get that. Although these days I’m overwhelmed with adult powers and responsibilities, I can still remember what that teenage feeling felt like. And I dig the genres it has inspired as much as anyone. Personally, I tend to go in for more of the heroic fantasy stuff—my favorite vice is the Forgotten Realms series of novels—or for military science fiction, but in either case, the idea is still to get outside my everyday life and live as someone else, someone who’s life is presumably greater than my own. That’s a basic part of popular fiction.
The other
part of Tony’s column
that I took issue with was his idea that comics are a relatively new
medium. On the
contrary, the evidence
suggests that they are the oldest
storytelling medium. Cavemen
told
stories through sequential cave paintings, and Egyptian hieroglyphics
are
nothing if not sequential art. That
tells me that the medium is capable of telling a wide variety of
stories, and
therefore it’s more than just a little unreasonable that we
as a culture tend
to focus so much on superhero stories here in
Okay, so I heard from some of you last week, and you said that you missed the politics and the economics and all the other stuff that has heretofore been such fundamental part of this column. That stuff is coming back next week, I promise.
Until then, stay safe.
***
Dan Head is a utilities analyst and occasional freelance writer. He’s anxiously awaiting the publication of Awesome Storm Justice 41, webisode 22.
To get your comic reviewed here, email Dan, or visit him on his hosted forum, DannoE’s Den of Dastardly Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap).
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