Four Eyes #2 — Writer: Joe Kelly; Artist: Max Fiumara
This tale of a young immigrant in a Depression-era America where dragons exist (and fight in arenas, and killed his father), is a gritty and brainy fantasy, the kind of thing that Jack Vance might have made a series out of in the 1950s. I don’t like this as much as Kelly’s Bad Dog, because it’s too grim to allow in that title’s anarchic humor, but it certainly knows what it’s doing, and Fiumara’s brawling dragons provide it with a dark grandeur that’s balanced nicely by its slightly-exaggerated little-kid protagonist. Definitely worth a look, especially if you liked, say, Arrowsmith.
The Great Unknown #1 (of 5) — Writer/Artist: Duncan Rouleau
I feel like this like I felt about Rouleau’s Metal Men mini-series: I can acknowledge all the work that went into it, but I just don’t like it very much. It’s not the art, which is solid and confident (although I’m not a big fan of the monochromatic color scheme); the story, though, is played too close to the vest (this feels like a piece of a puzzle instead of a satisfying stand-alone issue), and as a writer he has a… casual attitude toward punctuation that’s annoying enough to keep pulling me out of the story. The back-cover strip on the guy who stabbed Archimedes is cool, though; I’d totally buy a whole book of those instead.
Johnny Monster #1 (of 3) — Writer: Joshua Williamson; Art: J. C. Grande
This series, about a monster-hunting teen hero who’s not quite what he seems, has a pleasant little pre-superhero Marvel charge to it, but it’s sunk by the semipro artwork: Grande isn’t bad with the actual monsters (since we have no frame of reference for how they’re supposed to look, he’s got lot of leeway). but the human faces and figures are disastrous: bodies stretch out in impossible, flat poses, and the faces have that something’s-not-quite-right creepiness of early CGI animation. There’s potential here, but your $3.50 could be better spent on a lot of other comics.
Amber Atoms #1 — Writer/Artist: Kelly Yates
Not this one, though: it’s reminiscent of those countless late-’90s Image superhero pastiches, with an incomprehensible space opera plot involving aliens, babes with guns, and galactic “counsels.” That misspelling is symptomatic of a general lack of editing; there’s also “poles” instead of “polls,” “sick and tried” instead of “sick and tired,” and “past” instead of “passed.” Not to get all curmudgeonly or anything, but if you care so little about your work that you can’t even get a damn proofreader, why exactly should I spend $3.50 on it?
Mysterius the Unfathomable #2 — Writer: Jeff Parker; Art: Tom Fowler
This reminds me quite a bit of Crossgen’s Rune: A quirky detective and his competent female assistant solve mysteries, in a world not quite our own. Here, the twist is that the detective’s a magician, and that magic is real; he’s part charming rogue and part amoral creep, which makes it hard to root for him. This hasn’t quite gelled for me yet, but it’s solidly constructed, and between Parker’s cynical takes on the characters and Fowler’s exhuberant, semi-grotesque art, readers interested in something new could do worse.
Hellblazer #252 — Writer: Peter Milligan; Breakdowns: Giuseppe Camuncoli; Finishes: Stefano Landini
I stopped caring about John Constantine about the time Ennis and Dillon left (although those Azarello/Corben issues made me happy, too); most subsequent writers have gotten bogged down in overly-long, too-elaborate storylines that just haven’t held my interest (even Mike Carey, who should have been a natural after Lucifer, got bogged down in a drawn-out narrative that eventually bored me so much that I wandered off). This is all by way of saying that Peter Milligan’s current run, two issues in, hasn’t changed my mind — but fans of the writer might want to take note of it.
Punisher: Frank Castle Max #67 — Writer: Duane Swiercynski; Artist: Michel Lacombe
If you dumped all the hundreds of previous Punisher stories (plus those of Mack Bolan and all the other assorted tough-guy mob-killing vigilante clones) into a blender, and hit “puree,” you’d end up with something close to this generic mush: it’s not actively horrible, but there’s nothing to make it memorable, either. Memo to writers: the “six-hours-to-live” thing doesn’t work very well with corporate characters that the reader knows very well aren’t going anywhere.
Phil Mateer
