Hello, everybody! Thank you for indulging me last week with focusing on a single book. I don’t get to cut loose on a single text very often, and it feels good to do so every now and then. Thanks to that, my attention span is back down to internet standards, so let’s look at the highlight books of the week!
Five Ghosts 5 (Barbierre/ Mooneyham): The miniseries ends with consistent numerology, no creative team changeups, and a resolved character arc. This puts it well above the industry standard and deserves a pat on the back for making it this far.
Fabian Gray is a haunted man many times over, but the only ghost he’s worried about is his sister, the only person he’s ever fully trusted, one who trusted him back, and is the next best thing to dead because Fabian got greedy. To help her ghost find its way, either back to the living or to the afterlife, Fabian's been confronting the ghosts in his dreamstone, gaining their acceptance so he can use their powers more freely, and have a chance at facing the cabal that’s been dogging him throughout the series.
Fabian Gray is a haunted man many times over, but the only ghost he’s worried about is his sister, the only person he’s ever fully trusted, one who trusted him back, and is the next best thing to dead because Fabian got greedy. To help her ghost find its way, either back to the living or to the afterlife, Fabian's been confronting the ghosts in his dreamstone, gaining their acceptance so he can use their powers more freely, and have a chance at facing the cabal that’s been dogging him throughout the series.
From the very beginning, this book made it very clear it was a pulp series in the classical sense. It’s set in the 1920’s, heavy on the exposition, rooted in fisticuffs-style action but branching into the supernatural, has a token feminine character, and no real end in sight. Oh, and Nazis, I can’t believe I almost forgot Nazis. At least Barbierre and Mooneyham didn’t. This ends on the “End of the beginning” note with the promise of more to come, specifically in October with a one-shot that will eventually lead into a regular series.
I have mixed feelings about pulp stories. On the one hand, they’re formatted to the point where it’s almost predictable. They always have certain elements that present themselves in a certain order. Characters can do some things but can’t do others depending on what role they serve - a sidekick can only chuck rocks during a fight, regardless of how intelligent, experienced, or emotionally invested they are in fighting. Despite that kind of cookie-cutter storytelling, there’s a purity that I can’t help but admire. The hero’s going to be someone you want to root for, the villain’s going to prove him/ her/ themselves absolute jerks, and the world the story creates is something you’ll wish you could physically escape into, not just mentally.
This is a book that would have done very, very well in the prime time of pulp fiction. It’s been doing well in this era, too, and deserves a look. I will say that if you haven’t been following the series so far, you may want to wait for the trade - it’s supposed to be out in September and it’ll just be $10. Preorder with us if you’re interested!
Collider 1 (Oliver/ Rodriguez): Remember how on the Star Trek TV series (in this case, it doesn’t matter which one), every week there would be some problem that just spat in the laws of physics, and it’s be up to the crew to figure out a way to explain it away and/ or fix it with blinking switches or something? That’s fine when you’ve got tricorders and holodecks and can pull techno-Macguffins out of the cupboard, but in our day and age, if we had to deal with that, we’d be kind of screwed. That’s the world of Collider.
The natural world is taking cues from the world of high finance and privacy, and is choosing when and where it’s convenient to follow the rules, not caring when such practices could make ordinary citizens kersplode. (Not a typo. Explosions would be standard form, but KERsplosions are weirder and contain 30% more awesome.) (CC Note: We. Don’t. Care.) To keep Nature in line, there’s the Federal Bureau of Physics. Adam Hardy’s a field agent responsible for welding the world back into shape, and his dad wrote the field manual, so it’s only to be expected that he gets a surprise round-trip through one of these hiccups of the universe. What happens to him next may not be as important as entire city blocks floating away, or that some people are trying to profit from all this chaos.
The natural world is taking cues from the world of high finance and privacy, and is choosing when and where it’s convenient to follow the rules, not caring when such practices could make ordinary citizens kersplode. (Not a typo. Explosions would be standard form, but KERsplosions are weirder and contain 30% more awesome.) (CC Note: We. Don’t. Care.) To keep Nature in line, there’s the Federal Bureau of Physics. Adam Hardy’s a field agent responsible for welding the world back into shape, and his dad wrote the field manual, so it’s only to be expected that he gets a surprise round-trip through one of these hiccups of the universe. What happens to him next may not be as important as entire city blocks floating away, or that some people are trying to profit from all this chaos.
The idea of having to patch up pockets of scientific instability isn’t new. In any medium. It’s longevity come from, at least in part, the simple fact that there are so many ways in which the universe can go wrong that we’ll probably never run out. Likewise, the idea of government mismanagement isn’t new and has plenty of life left in it. This series is putting them together brazenly, and if it weren’t for the execution, it would read pretty stale. As it is, there’s a modern, semi-dysfunctional father-son relationship that grabs attention right away, dialog that sounds authentic, and enough world-building to give the reader solid footing, even if gravity’s not a constant. The art style is somewhere in between Sean Murphy and Paul Pope, with straight lines where one would expect curves and vice versa in just enough places to make one look closely, but not demanding so much attention to be confusing or distracting. It works well for this kind of story.
It’s too soon to tell if this is going to be a success title for Vertigo in the vein of Fables or Y the Last Man, but it’s a very solid start. There are many ways this can go, and any of them would make for a fun story. Knowing Vertigo, it’ll find a way to fit them all into the same book, and that could be amazing.
Venom 38 (Bunn/ Jacinto): Flash Thompson has spent the last few years proving himself to just about everyone he’s ever met, and he’s had a very rough audience. Captain America, Spider-Man, his father, his ex-girlfriend, the US government, Eddie Brock, just to name a few. And now, just when he’s got his feet under him (CC Note: Dude, not cool) in his new home, he’s got some neighbor drama trying to blow up in his face.
Eugene Thompson is a high-school athletics teacher without legs. That his arrival in Philadelphia happens to coincide with the appearance of the military-trained Venom, an elderly nun, and four men of different hairstyles all with a taste for black and white clothing is purely coincidental and no one should think otherwise unless they want to be rude about it. The polite thing to do, as reporter Katy Kiernan demonstrates, is to help immerse them into the city’s community so that they can feel at home and contribute to society. Now if you wanted to be REALLY rude, you could act like the gothy teenage girl in Coach Thompson’s school, figure everything out, and try to talk to him about it. That has mixed results.
Eugene Thompson is a high-school athletics teacher without legs. That his arrival in Philadelphia happens to coincide with the appearance of the military-trained Venom, an elderly nun, and four men of different hairstyles all with a taste for black and white clothing is purely coincidental and no one should think otherwise unless they want to be rude about it. The polite thing to do, as reporter Katy Kiernan demonstrates, is to help immerse them into the city’s community so that they can feel at home and contribute to society. Now if you wanted to be REALLY rude, you could act like the gothy teenage girl in Coach Thompson’s school, figure everything out, and try to talk to him about it. That has mixed results.
Comics and their fans seem to love tragic origin stories, and it’s not hard to figure out why. People lose pieces of themselves all the time, and sometimes that loss is so profound that the only way to go on is by hoping that something constructive will come out of it. Peter Parker lost his father figure and became the crimefighter Spider-Man. Flash lost his legs and earned the chance to become the most upstanding version of Venom yet. Watching that tragedy play out isn’t pretty, but it’s what gives the audience a sense that something new is starting. That tragedy was supposed to play out here, and it didn’t. There was loss, there were screams and tears, and yet none of it really connected. It wasn’t so much upstaged by the fighting as much as replaced by it, which is a bad way to go. Almost in the same way, the artwork was needlessly busy. Lots of heavy lines and sharp angles suggesting depth to panels when there’s simply not much going on.
The debut of Phenom Venom (CC Note: If that name sticks, I will cry) (Would you prefer Ingenue Thompson?) (CC Note: I hate you so much) is lackluster at best, if I’m going to be honest about it. It’s sad because all the ingredients are there for something special, but I’m just not reading it here.
3 Guns 1 (Grant/ Laiso): I didn’t know much about 3 Guns before picking it up. It’s fair to say I know as much about it as its prequel, the movie 2 Guns starring Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington (CC Note: It’s not a sequel, is it?). If 3 Guns is any indicator, 2 Guns is about the misadventures of undercover agents from different agencies tripping over each other’s investigations. (CC Note: Well, I’m sure that’s just got to be a coincide- wait, this IS a sequel. How did we not know that?)
Bobby Beans is being pulled out of retirement by the short hairs to help a radical separatist militia stop themselves from committing honest capitalism. He’s not sure how that all works either, and would be happy to bow out if it weren’t for the fact that people’s he’s met will die if he doesn’t. One wrinkle in his plan: Marcus, an associate of his, is planning to pull the same scam for the other side of the transaction. They think they can both do their jobs and not get in each other’s way this time, and agree to make every effort to do just that. The biggest hurdle, as it often is, ends up being the one neither notices.
The action speaks volumes louder than the words in this book. The characters don’t have much to say that doesn’t come off as exposition, and (accents aside) there’s not much variety in the “voices” either. These are physical characters that prefer to punch people in the face when they want some quiet time, and the ones that are picky about who they punch and when end up being the “good guys”. Laiso carries most of the storytelling, a bit young in his career to have that much responsibility, but he proves himself capable - the art has a blockbuster-movie style that goes for exaggerated angles and anatomy to sell itself, but has enough consistency and motion to pull it off.
If you want to show up to this summer’s big-budget buddy-action movie with your spectacles on and need some authentic way to accessorize hipster style, then we have got what you need. As reading material goes, it’s not bad either.
Bobby Beans is being pulled out of retirement by the short hairs to help a radical separatist militia stop themselves from committing honest capitalism. He’s not sure how that all works either, and would be happy to bow out if it weren’t for the fact that people’s he’s met will die if he doesn’t. One wrinkle in his plan: Marcus, an associate of his, is planning to pull the same scam for the other side of the transaction. They think they can both do their jobs and not get in each other’s way this time, and agree to make every effort to do just that. The biggest hurdle, as it often is, ends up being the one neither notices.
The action speaks volumes louder than the words in this book. The characters don’t have much to say that doesn’t come off as exposition, and (accents aside) there’s not much variety in the “voices” either. These are physical characters that prefer to punch people in the face when they want some quiet time, and the ones that are picky about who they punch and when end up being the “good guys”. Laiso carries most of the storytelling, a bit young in his career to have that much responsibility, but he proves himself capable - the art has a blockbuster-movie style that goes for exaggerated angles and anatomy to sell itself, but has enough consistency and motion to pull it off.
If you want to show up to this summer’s big-budget buddy-action movie with your spectacles on and need some authentic way to accessorize hipster style, then we have got what you need. As reading material goes, it’s not bad either.
I hope you’ve had a fun July, everyone! Who knows where August will take us (GenCon), but we’ll be here to help you find your way (unless we’re at GenCon). See you next week!
Looking for older Variant Coverage Blogs by Ryan Walsh for Comic Carnival? They're here:
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