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“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”

~Anaïs Nin

It’s gonna be another short column this week and my last for a while.  Starting next week, I’m going on vacation for month, and my friend Chris Randolph is gonna fill in for me.  I’ll let him tell you about  himself, but I will go ahead and say that I looked for a pretty good while before deciding on a writer whose talent I thought would make a good change-of-pace from what I normally do here.  I think you’ll enjoy Chris’s writing, and if I didn’t he wouldn’t be filling in for me.

I also think I need the break.  I think this column gets stale when it becomes work, and sadly, that’s what it’s been the last two or three weeks. 

A little time off will help, I hope.

Gene Simmons

Zipper #2

Written by Tom Waltz

Pencils by Casey Maloney

Inks by Marc Rueda

Colors by Dusty Yee

Letters by Neil Uyetake

Published by IDW, 22 pages for $3.99

I was more than psyched to get the advanced look at IDW’s Zipper #2, and so far this is a series that doesn’t disappoint.  Zipper follows alien outlaw refugee Xeng Ral as he escapes the collective consciousness of his world for the wild urban individualism of Detriot.  This second issue sees Xeng start to build personal relationships with some of Detriot’s less desirable residents while introducing a pair of subplots that are interesting and well-conceived if somewhat obvious given the story’s high-concept.

The more I read of Tom Waltz’s writing, the more I like it.  For one thing, Waltz has a good ear.  His characters speak believable urban Detroit slang that’s neither over-wrought nor over-generalized.  Each character has his own voice, which is an astonishing feat given the way most writers write inner-city slang.  And then too, this is a book with a slow burn plot that has still found a way to be exciting in its early issues.  We’re decidedly still in the first act of the book’s first arc, and yet we’ve already seen sex, violence, and violent sex… basically all the things you’d expect to see out of a comic inspired by the imagination of Kiss front man Gene Simmons.

Once again, my favorite thing about this book is its art.  Here specifically, we see a number of artistically interesting shots that succeed in presenting the ostensibly mundane in an exciting and visually interesting way.  This is possible because Casey Maloney’s art has found a decided groove in this book, making his characters both heroic and stylish without giving over to abstraction.  This isn’t your typical steroid-inspired superhero storytelling, but it’s also not cartoony.  Instead, the pages find a balance, keeping things exciting and exaggerated without being overtly outrageous.  On the whole, it’s quality stuff and easily the best I’ve seen from Maloney.  It also helps that the colors pop.  The lighting in particular emphasizes what the pencils and inks are already doing successfully.

Zipper is a kind of superhero meets sci fi book with elements of horror-gore thrown in for good measure.  It’s well worth your time, particularly for sci fi fans starving for something that’s contemporary and unique and somewhat edgy as well.  I recommend it whole-heartedly as a quality change-of-pace for any comic reader who likes action and intrigue along with their aliens-in-leather. 

Zipper is good stuff!  Check it out!

Stray Voltage

The Tennessee Titans sucked this weekend, so I’ll spare you the recap.  Plus it was cold, so I barely got out on my bike, which also sucked, and on top of that, both my kids were sick, and I spent most of the weekend with a screwdriver in my hand putting up pictures, building shelves, and hanging curtains and generally playing handyman to the stars all weekend long.  And all of that sucked.  So, bottom line, I was exhausted by Monday afternoon and staring at the start of another work week, albeit a short one, and I suppose that more than anything is what’s been up with this column lately.  Now I’m—not surprisingly—super-excited to be going on break, although I don’t plan to do much of anything while I’m gone.

And hey, what the Hell?  Are you really gonna miss me? 

Actually, I have it on good authority that the problem with my writing right now is that I’ve just been pushing it too fucking hard for too fucking long, and if I’m not careful, my brains are gonna melt.  And hey, that may not be true, but when folks tell me to take some time and consider what I’ve written and what my next step ought to be, that seems like good advice, especially since I write as a hobby.  When it’s not fun… well, it’s not fun.  There are a lot of other things I could be doing with my time.

So I’ll be back next month, but before I go, let me leave you with the long lost first two pages of Chapter 3 of The Adventures of Hiro Arturian, Samurai, written by me and illustrated by my very good friend and brand new father Kevin Fraga.  Kevin’s wife just had twins, so HOORAY KEVIN!

If you want to read the rest of Hiro, check out my Comic Space Page.  The first two chapters—24 pages total—are up there waiting for you.

And who knows?  Maybe someday we’ll actually finish the story, and you can even find out how it ends!

Until then, hang loose, and enjoy the fill-ins from Chris.

Via con Dios mi amigos!

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Dan Head is a utilities analyst and freelance writer.  You can learn more about him and his work on his ComicSpace Page or by visiting his hosted forum at AwesomeStormJustice.com.