Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero

Title: Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero

Series: Original Graphic Novel
Publisher: Legendary Comics

Publication Date: 2013
Creative Team:
            Writer: Travis Beacham

Artists:

Sean Chen

Yvel Guichet

Pericles Junior

Chris Batista

Geoff Shaw

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Monsters, Robots

Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero had three strikes against it before I ever held a copy.  Strike One: I’ve got geek street cred for days but I really don’t have much love for kaiju.  Kaiju is Japanese for ‘Strange Beast’ and is used to refer to creatures like Godzilla, the Cloverfield monster, and most of what the original Power Rangers fought in Megazord form.  I admit, there’s something fun about watching a guy in a monster suit stepping on a cardboard city but on the whole it’s not for me.  Strike Two:  As to Mechs/Giant Robots, I loved Voltron as a kid but I’m not nostalgic about it and as an adult I care barely sit through the Rifftrax version of Transformers.  Strike Three: There might be good movie tie-in comic out there but I have yet to read one.  They are almost always superfluous junk.  Unfortunately, Tales from Year Zero didn’t change my opinion on any of these fronts.

In the Pacific Rim bad breath can be lethal!

I only had two reasons for bothering with Pacific Rim: Guillermo Del Toro and Idris Elba.  Neither person is involved with this comic but they both saw something in this project.  When it comes to Del Toro, he’s never let me down (although he came close with Blade 2).  Meanwhile, Idris Elba usually picks interesting projects (The Wire, Luther, and Prometheus to name a few).  All of that was enough that I was willing to leave my preconceptions at the door and give Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero a chance.  I just wish I had been rewarded by that decision.

Little Known Fact: Kaiju hate Suspension Bridges but they love Truss Arch.

Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero deals mostly with the impetus of the PPDC.  What is the PPDC you ask?  They are the world organization that defends the planet from Kaiju attacks.  You might be wondering what PPDC stands for.  I read the comic twice and I still can’t tell you.  Those initials are everywhere in the comic.  Places are labeled as PPDC facilities in the narration, PPDC logos are on jackets, uniforms, and buildings.  Characters mention the organization constantly.  I’ve scoured this comic from beginning to end and back again and the best I can tell you is that it might mean Pan Pacific Something Something.  Defense Counsel?  Defense Coalition? Dehydrated Cantaloupe?  I still don’t know.  If it’s in there I couldn’t find it.  This is really just the beginning of a longer list of inadequately answered / completely unanswered questions.  The simplest question is twofold:  Where do kaiju come from and why are they suddenly appearing regularly?  None of the scientists and military personnel we meet even suggest exploring that question.  In this fictional world is the answer so obvious that people don’t even find it worth discussing?  I know people have to be defended and that goal could easily force the questions of kaiju origin into the corner for a while but if you’re repeatedly attacked by an enemy eventually you have to go on the offensive.  The PPDC is all defense.  Apparently no one wants to win the war they just want to win a few battles.  This is just one of the ways Pacific Rim skims the surface of its concept.  Heaven forbid anything should get in the way of robots vs monsters.

The Pan Pacific Demarcated Cheese Jaeger Academy.

Travis Beacham is the concept creator.  He co-wrote the screenplay with Guillermo Del Toro but he’s flying solo on the comic.  The story is told as a series of interviews.  A reporter named Naomi Sokolov is assigned to write a retrospective article about kaiju and the PPDC called “Why We Fight”.  Tendo Choi is the first to be interviewed.  He was in San Francisco when the first kaiju arrived on what would later be called K-Day.  The second interview is with Dr. Schoenfeld who came up with the concept of fighting the kaiju with giant mechs.  (This is easily the best of the three stories).  The last interview is with Marshal Pentecost (Idris Elba’s character).  He explains anecdotally the relationship that mech co-pilots share.  Each man has a different perspective on “Why We Fight”.  Tendo’s figures there’s nothing else humanity could do, Dr. Schoenfeld suggests the answer is love, and Pentecost declares they fight to win (Hoorah!  But again how are you going to win without figured the where, why, how, etc of the enemy).  Ultimately, the fighting may be over though since it’s been decided to build a huge wall across all coast lines effectively locking the kaiju out at sea.  

Especially since my X-Box broke.  So we might as well fight and stuff.

Stupid Blood Tree!

The way the art in the comic is credited forces you to guess which artist is drawing which parts.  I mostly think they are listed in order but it’s not always clear when artists have switched.  In the final story the artists even swap out for about 3 pages in the middle for no apparent reason.  With this situation I hate to credit/criticize an artist by name since I’m not sure who did what.  I will just say that I was the least fond of whoever illustrated Tendo Choi’s story.  Their characters aren’t very consistent and the detail level drastically from panel to panel.  Meanwhile, the artwork on the overarching interview narrative was excellent.  One of the kaiju in the middle story “Turn the Tide” was especially bizarre in a fun way.  If this were an out and out anthology I would have loved to see extremely varied artwork but since this is situated as one coherent narrative I’m glad that the art was mostly consistent.  The problems I had with this comic had little to do with the art.

Overall Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero is nothing special.  The story does what it’s supposed to do; it’s an appetizer.  It gets your taste buds going and hopefully you’re excited for the meal.  However, like most appetizers you really only buy it because you’re hungry now and you know your dinner might take a few minutes to arrive.  Unfortunately, also like most appetizers they are completely forgotten once your dinner arrives.  Worse than that, if Pacific Rim flops at the box office than Tales from Year Zero will disappear more completely than Jimmy Hoffa.  Hopefully, Del Toro has a few tricks up his sleeve.  Call me crazy but I still have high hopes for the entree.

Ever have that dream where spiders are crawling all over you?  Here it is Mech style

Grade: C -

Dexter 01

Title: Dexter 01

Series: Miniseries

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Publication Date: 2013

Creative Team:
            Writer: Jeff Lindsay

Artist: Dalibor Talajic

Cover: Mike Del Mundo

Genre: Suspence, Drama

Adapting a work to a different medium is like creating a parallel universe.  No adaptation really gets everything 100% the same.  How could it?  Every medium has strengths and weakness.  Before Michael C. Hall was Dexter there was only one universe; the universe of Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter.  However, Showtime’s Dexter has taken on a life of it’s on and established a parallel universe far more well know than the original.  So the question on a lot of minds about Marvel’s new Dexter miniseries: Which Dexter is this?  For the answer, you need look no further than the series’ writer Jeff Lindsay.  Jeff Lindsay is Dexter’s creator and is personally adapting him for comics.  This may not be the Dexter most people are familiar with but at his heart he’s still just a serial killer of serial killers.

Both Dexters 'Dream Darkly' but only one was married to Jennifer Carpenter.

I’ve watched all of Showtime’s Dexter at least twice but to date the closest I’ve come to reading the books is my dusty copy of Darkly Dreaming Dexter sitting patiently on my To-Read pile. (I’m getting to it!  Back off!)  So my only real experience with the Dexter books is what a quick glance at Wikipedia could tell me.  I was a little worried that the comic would present some jarring changes.  I was aware that in the books Dexter’s Dark Passenger may be a real entity of some sort rather than just a poetic name for his need.  So far in the comic the Dark Passenger is represented as an exaggerated shadow that follows Dexter like a murderous grownup Peter Pan.  The other big change so far is to see Rita as she’s no longer in the Showtime series.  Otherwise, Dexter is much the same.  There are knives and blood slides.  I felt more at home in this parallel universe than I thought I would.

Rita finds Dexter's invitation to the Serial Killer Con and begins to get suspicious

The setup for Dexter’s first comic story isn’t too dissimilar from an episode of the TV show.  Dexter gets an invite to his High School reunion where a former classmate may be a target.  That is where the similarities end.  Dexter wants to avoid his reunion but his wife Rita decides they need to go.  (I have to say I like Rita on the TV show much better.  The book/comic Rita feels like more of a vacuous accessory than a person.  Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program).  While there Rita begins to see that maybe Dexter didn’t really have any friends when he was younger.  Before this can sink in, Dexter’s old classmate Steve Gonzalez enters.  Steve used to bully Dexter.  Dexter retaliated in his own unique way and Steve never bothered him again.  However, Steve Gonzalez might have an idea of Dexter’s secret but it appears he might have a secret or two of his own.

Harry teaches conflict resolution through human physiology labs.

Jeff Lindsay keeps the comic form of Dexter infused with the same tension, macabre tone, and occasional dark humor that I’ve come to expect with the character.  It’s not always easy for a writer to transition to a different medium but Lindsay seems to have a solid grasp of the form.  One of the pitfalls of writers new to comics is the tendency to overdo it on dialogue and narration.  Lindsay realizes the strength of allowing art to tell a story and uses quite a few silent panels to set scenes and build tension.  This gives Dexter room to breathe and allows the audience the opportunity to guess at subtext.  It’s clear that Dexter and Mister Gonzalez are going to clash and there’s enough built into the story to make it worth coming back to see how that plays out.  I think my only real complaint writing wise is that occasionally there’s a little too much exposition in the dialogue but as this is the first chapter of the story I can let it slide.  Beyond that I also noticed while the exposition helped serve the plot, it didn’t really explain the overall concept.  This comic was definitely written with current fans rather than new fans in mind.  If you didn’t know anything about Dexter you could figure some of it out but you might be a little lost.

Dexter takes his wrath out on an unsuspecting Cutco salesmen.

There are several times in Dexter where I’m not really sure what I’m looking at.  As I mentioned before in the book series I had understood that Dexter’s Dark Passenger may be some kind of demon that shares Dexter’s physical form.  In the comic, this is represented as Dexter’s shadow.  However, sometimes other people are shown as this same shadowy form.  I’m not sure if this is how Dexter occasionally sees people or if this is a visual flourish to help emphasize what’s important in a scene.  I’m curious to see if this gets fleshed out any more as the series continues.  In either case, Dalibor Talajic does a great job of keeping things interesting.  It would be hard to visually re-define a group of characters that are already so well defined for a lot of people.  Talajic takes this challenge and draws consistent characters that feel right without making reference to their parallel universe TV counter parts.  (Even though I’ll admit I was still hearing Michael C. Hall’s voice in my head whenever I read Dexter’s lines).

Um....Yeah....I got nothing...

In recent years I’ve gravitated toward less superhero fare and more independent work so I haven’t spent as much time looking at Marvel Comics’ catalogue.  Since Marvel realizes there are people like me out there, over the last 10 years they’ve carved out a spot in their publishing line for literary adaptations.  They’ve published classical adaptations like Pride and Prejudice and their critically acclaimed The Wizard of OZ series.  They’ve also released more modern work like Ender’s Game: Battle Room and the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series.  So as odd as it might initially seem Dexter is in good company at Marvel.

The line up for Marvel's new series, Literary Avengers!  Excelsior!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Dexter comic based on the book but I was happy with what I got.  There was a different sort of flavor than what I was used to but I like seeing different variations of characters I’m use to.  It helps to keep things fresh.  I’m excited to see what Lindsay has in store for Dexter at Marvel.  Perhaps if all goes well there could be more.

Miami Metro Homicide investigates more Cutco murders!

Grade: A

Thumbprint 01

Title: Joe Hill’s Thumbprint 01

Series: 3 Issue Miniseries

Publisher: IDW Publishing

Publication Date: 2013

Creative Team:

            Writer: Jason Ciaramelia

Artist: Vic Malhotra

Genre: Drama, Military, Spy

Joe Hill is an engaging, capable writer whether you’re talking comics or books.  Jason Ciaramelia from my limited experience with his work appears to be much the same.  The last collaborative work that I encountered of theirs was The Cape miniseries (no relation to the slow-motion train wreck of a TV series).  The Cape turned the traditional superhero origin story on its head.  I would review it here but it’s a bit outside the scope of this blog.  However, if such things are of interest to you, I would highly recommend checking it out.  With all of this in mind I was pretty sure I would enjoy Thumbprint.  And so far I’m definitely intrigued.  This is only the first issue of a 3 issue miniseries so there’s still plenty of time to read this series as it’s released monthly.

One is great the other is like watching your Grandma take out her false teeth.

Thumbprint chronicles the life of Mallory Grennan during and after her service in Abu Ghraib.  While no specific year is mentioned it’s clear that Mallory was involved in the scandalous activity that took place there around 2003 and 2004.  (For those of you not familiar with those events here’s the Wikipedia page. Be warned it’s a bit graphic.) Despite her involvement, there was only circumstantial evidence against her so she was able to avoid prosecution.  8 months later Mallory is back home and settling into civilian life.  She is clearly disgusted with her behavior and not adjusting well.  All of this would be enough but she receives a mysterious unmarked envelope with a single piece of paper inside bearing someone’s thumbprint.  Mallory doesn’t know what it means but feels like it’s a threat.

Mallory receives a letter from Helen Keller.

Before Joe Hill broke into comics or had established himself as a novelist, he was known for his short stories.  At present I’ve only read his novels and comics so I had no idea what to expect from Thumbprint.  While the original short story was written in 2007, Jason Ciaramelia’s comic adaptation still feels topical.  Things have changed since 2003 but not by that much.  Thumbprint raises questions that we still need to be asking ourselves.  What are we willing to do to keep our country and its people safe?  Obviously, the soldiers at Abu Ghraib took extreme measures that should never occur.  However, we are also shown Mallory water-boarding a potential suspect.  Even though attempts have been made to prohibit water-boarding by the American military I think it would be naive to assume that it’s no longer employed.  Thumbprint at least in part asks the question: What becomes of the soldiers asked to perpetrate such monstrous acts on our behalf?

I'm all our of snarky comments on this one.  

As readers I think we all want to understand and empathize with our main characters and beyond that, hopefully like them.  I’m not sure that I feel that way about Mallory yet.  The story starts off by introducing the framing device that Mallory is telling her story before her demise.  We are left to wonder whether she intends to commit suicide or if she’s aware she can’t stop some outside force from taking her life.  Furthermore before really getting into Mallory’s military history she recounts a run in with a slimy co-worker’s sexual advances.  Ciaramelia realizes how his audience is likely to feel about Mallory once more of her story is told and has attempted to position her in the most sympathetic way possible.  I don’t know that it entirely works but I haven’t written her off yet and maybe that’s really all Ciaramelia needs since I’m hooked enough to want to come back next month.  Besides I think we all enjoy a good redemptive tale.  We’ve all made mistakes that we hope we can overcome and it’s nice to see characters in our fiction doing just that.  Hopefully Mallory can.

Mallory holds the ants in her apartment hostage.

Vic Malhotra’s keeps Thumbprint mostly in the shadows.  He commonly uses seas of black with the occasional island of color to flesh-out scenes.  When scenes aren’t dark he’s applied a muted brown/blue color scheme.  All of this helps to build the dark morally ambiguity tone of this work.  A lot of comic artists who do monthly titles have other artists ink and color their work.  It seems clear that Malhotra considers these steps as part of his artistic process and it’s hard to imagine what this comic would look like if those tasks were out sourced.  It makes me wonder what his initial penciled pages looks like.  I suspect they probably lack detail compared to most monthly comic artists.  Overall, I enjoy Malhotra’s work but his style is one that has become more prevalent in comics over the last decade and I don’t know that his art really stands out compared to his peers.  His strengths are certainly close-ups which usually look excellent but any faces and figures at a distance have a tendency to look muddled and a bit boxy.  While I do have some issue with the art in that regard, I think Vic Malhotra was a good choice for this comic.

Boxy Brown enjoys a brisk Autumn.

It’s hard to evaluate a work by a single chapter.  I may be able to judge where the creators are going with it but without the work as a whole it’s like examining a puzzle piece.  What seems to work well now may break down in light of the bigger picture.  But for now Thumbprint works and there’s the promise of a story well worth the time to read.

Mallory will soon pay for her flagrant littering.

Grade: A

Anya's Ghost

Title: Anya’s Ghost

Series: Original Graphic Novel

Publisher: First Second Books

Publication Date: June 2011

Creative Team:
            Writer/Artist: Vera Brosgol 

Genre: Super Natural, Young Adult

A couple weeks ago I decided to google “Top 10 Comics by Women”.  I don’t remember what got me thinking that way (probably The Mary Sue.  Check them out and then come right back) but what I was hoping to find was a list of the best creator-owned comics by women.  What I got was unsurprisingly disappointing.  I dug through about 10 pages of search results with titles similar to “Top 10 Hottest Women in Comics”.  Usually these lists were populated by comic book characters, which is too bad because even a list of “Top 10 Hottest Women Working in Comics” would have been helpful.  Eventually, my googling (does that sound bad here) returned the kind of entry I had been looking for.  On that list was Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost.  It had an intriguing cover and I filed it in the back of my head.  Not long after, I was scouring through my local library’s graphic novel section for the 100^th 5^th time this year (I swear they still have some comics I haven’t read) and low and behold there was Anya’s Ghost.  (The book that is, not Anya’s actual ghost.  Otherwise, this review would quickly have becoming the opening scene to Ghostbusters).  Clearly, this review was meant to be.

Emily before and after using Proactive.

Before I even cracked the cover to Anya’s Ghost this comic had a lot going for it.  Firstly, it has a recommendation from Neil Gaiman himself right on the front.  Secondly, it won an Eisner in 2012 for Best Publication for Young Adults.  Thirdly, it also won a Harvey Award for Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers.  And last but not least it was published by First Second Books.  I have to say over the past year or so I’ve been engaging in a slow motion love affair with this publisher.  First Second Books has only been around for a few years now but they’ve quickly established themselves as a diverse high quality comic publisher.  For example, they also publish a personal favorite of mine called Feynman, a comic biography of the physicist Richard Feynman (I’ll probably be reviewing that soon).  If you ever find yourself considering reading a graphic novel and it turns out it’s published by First Second Books, I highly recommend that you toss out your trepidation and just go for it.

While Anya has smelt it she is confident that she has not dealt it.

Anya’s Ghost is the story of Annushka Borzakovskaya, or Anya for short (but I bet you figured that out already).  Anya’s family emigrated from Russia to the United States when she was about 5.  Her home life is rather steeped in Russian culture but she feels more embarrassed by this than proud.  It’s hinted that earlier in her school career she had been made fun of for being foreign and as she’s gotten older she’s over compensated to seem more American.  She’s gotten rid of her accent and shortened her first name to something far less Russian in order to fit in.  At one point she derogatorily describes another Russian as “Fobby” meaning fresh off the boat.  Besides these feelings of being a stranger in the United States, Anya has the universally relatable high school concerns of wanting to be cool and wanting to be found attractive.  Anya sees the boy she likes with the girl she wishes she was and can’t help but feel jealous.  All of this frustration leads her on a walk in the woods where she accidentally tumbles into an uncovered well.  It’s in this well that she first meets a ghost named, Emily. 

Anya relates her dislike of all things nautical.

Unless they're the librarian from
Ghostbusters.  She's just creepy.

Emily died almost 90 years earlier when she was around Anya’s age.  She tells Anya that she had similarly fallen in the well and been trapped ever since.  After a day or so Anya is rescued (in a rather hilarious way that I won’t spoil) and unintentionally brings Emily with her.  Anya has mixed feelings about having Emily around but her apprehension quickly turns to excitement when Emily shows how useful it can be to have a ghost for a friend.  Before long Emily is helping Anya in school and her social life.  Anya’s life has never been better but she begins to have a nagging feeling about her new friend.  Who was Emily when she was alive?  What circumstances brought her to the well?  Emily might not be who she claims to be.

Anya is extremely relatable.  Her reaction to her friends and family all feel very real.  Her characterization is very three dimensional and color scheme to the contrary her world is not black and white.  There are a couple characters that in the hands of a lesser writer would have been high school stereotypes.  Luckily, in Vera’s hands everyone is given a thoughtful depth.  I couldn’t find a lot of information on Vera Brosgol but as I understand it she was born in Moscow.  I can’t help but wonder if at least the setting and tone of Anya’s Ghost are autobiographical in nature.  (I assume Vera didn’t meet a ghost in a well but stranger things have happened).  

Anya wonders why ParaNorman won't
return her calls.

Anya’s Ghost has an animated feature look about it.  This isn’t overly surprising since Vera Brosgol has had an influence on some recent entries to the young adult spooky animated genre.  She has worked as a storyboard artist on the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (the recommendation on the cover probably makes a lot more sense now) and more recently she did the same for ParaNorman.  Her style does a good job of transitioning between light and fun to moody and creepy without ever getting to heavy.  Another impressive feature of the art is the shading.  A lot of black and white comics stick with that pallet.  Everything is either black or white.  Vera uses what looks like watercolors to provide a beautiful world of gray tones that wonderfully set the atmosphere.  Even if you by some chance hate the story the art work is fun to poor over.

Neil Gaiman called Anya’s Ghost a masterpiece and who am I to argue.  I know Ms. Brosgol spent several years working on this story but I hope that she had several projects she was juggling.  I would love to see her producing more original graphic novels and frankly I’m not a very patient man.  The comics world needs more work like this and comic shops need to take more chances on work like this.  Next time you’re looking for something new to read, take a chance on Anya’s Ghost, you won’t be sorry.

Grade: A+

Clone Volume 1

Title: Clone Volume 1

Series: Ongoing

Publisher: Image Skybound

Publication Date: 2012 - Present

Creative Team: 

            Writer: David Schulner

Artist: Juan Jose Ryp
Colors: Felix Serrano

Genre: SciFi, Drama

Clone is overflowing with potential.  The premise is high concept and intriguing: a man realizes he is one of a great many clones.  The philosophical implications of the story are clearly not lost on its creative team.  The art is kinetic and detailed.  And if all that weren’t enough, it was handpicked by Image Comics superstar Robert Kirkman for his personal imprint, Skybound.  Clone is currently one of only 2 creator owned titles not created by Kirkman selected for Skybound (the other being Witch Doctor).  Clone could be great but it’s not there yet.

Who says you can't learn anything from comics?

Clone has two narratives running parallel (at least during the first arc).  The primary story is about a Luke and his pregnant wife Amelia.  (Amelia visually reminds me quite a bit of Amelia Pond from Doctor Who.  Note to self: Find out if Juan Jose Ryp and/or David Schulner are fans of the 11^th Doctor).  Luke learns that he is a clone.  Before long we meet fellow clone, Foster, who is trying to save Luke from yet another clone who calls himself Patrick.  Both of Luke’s new clone friends are headquartered at top secret facilities which are full of yet more clones.  With all these clones running around the question begins to crop up: Why is Luke the subject of all this special attention?  The answer lies with Amelia.  How can Amelia be pregnant when all clones are sterile?

Luke finds comfort while playing with himself.

The secondary narrative is all politics.  The republican Vice President of the United States has an important vote to make regarding the ban of stem cell research.  His daughter has Parkinson’s disease and a vote to ban stem cell research could ruin her chances of living to see a cure.  However, if the Vice President votes against banning stem cell research he risks alienating his republican base and killing his political career. These two narratives come together in a fairly typical way for this kind of story.  I’ll let you work that out for yourself but I’ll give you a hint: Who do you think paid for all the cloning?

The Vice President considers employing Tommy Lee Jones as a body double after watching Dave.

Juan Jose Ryp has a rather impressive resume.  He’s worked with Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and Peter Milligan to name a few.  I think it’s safe to say that most modern comic artists would kill to have the opportunity to collaborate with these writers.  At a quick glance it’s easy to see how Ryp came by these projects.  His art work is excellent.  The level of detail he employs would exhaust most artists.  Beyond the detail, he has a very unique pointillist inspired shading style.  His work is easy to pick out of a line up.  However, all this having been said there were a handful of artistic choices that I wasn’t overly fond of.  Ryp likes to add a flourish to any impact in the story (ie: gunshots, kicks, punches, etc).  Because of Clone’s subject matter I was expecting a very sci-fi tone.  On the first couple pages two men are fighting and these bright yellow/orange flourishes are shown at the point of impact of landed punch and kick.  I had to stop for a moment and decide if this character had special powers or if this was simply a stylistic choice.  Eventually, I realized it was stylistic but I shouldn’t have to figure that out.  Later in the comic I was once again debating whether or not the clones had special powers as Luke the main character is elbowing his way through a fairly sturdy looking metal door in a top secret facility.  He’s smashing glass and bending metal that don’t look like they would give when up against a human of normal strength.  I admit I haven’t broken down a metal lab door but I can’t help but think my chances of success are low.  To be fair, this could have been at the writer’s request.  All in all despite these occasional quirks Ryp’s artwork is impressive.  It would be hard to deal with an increasing large cast of people with the same face and still manage to keep them distinct.  I rarely if ever had trouble telling the difference between our cloned heroes and villains.  Clone is lucky to have Juan Jose Ryp aboard.

Foster stops his assailant with strategically placed orange Fanta.

Clone is the comic writing debut of David Shulner.  He shows great skill and generally does a good job of juggling his plot lines to keep the story moving.  Unfortunately, there were a few too many clunky spots that took me out of the story.  There were at least three times when gun wielding soldiers stood only a few feet away from their targets and failed to hit anything.  I can’t hold this against Shulner too much since you could accuse almost any action film of the same but somehow seeing it in a static comic panel really drives home how ridiculous it is.  By itself this is forgivable and forgettable but it’s indicative of the story’s larger problem.  These characters feel very drug along by the plot.  You can feel that there are certain story beats that Shulner had in mind to hit.  It’s like his characters are in an old arcade rail shooter like House of the Dead or Area 51.  They might not trust someone, they may claim that saving someone is all they care about, or staying where they are might mean certain death but regardless of these concerns the plot grabs them by the arm and forces them to where they’re supposed to be.  And like dutiful children our characters abandon the task at hand and head toward the next action sequence.

No metal door can stop Luke from getting to the bathroom after eating at Taco Bell.

Still, Shulner is thinking about the implications of his story.  His characters deal with the identity issues that being a clone implies.  Luke encounters a fellow clone that seems to feel his status as one of many makes him a cog.  He is both guilty and innocent.  He is both nothing and everything.  Luke through his actions shows he is firm in the belief that he is an individual.  He doesn’t feel his life has to be defined by the existence of his brothers.  Shulner’s clearly an intelligent person and I think that in time Clone can overcome its freshmen awkwardness.  All the ingredients are there, it just needs to figure out the proper measurements and how long to cook.

With his last breath, Foster takes aim at the sickeningly cute refrigerator magnets.

Grade: B-

Revival Vol. 1: You're Among Friends

Title: Revival Vol 1: You’re Among Friends

Series: Ongoing
Publisher: Image Comics

Publication Date: 2012 - Present
Creative Team:
            Writer: Tim Seeley
            Artist: Mike Norton
            Colors: Mark Englert

Covers: Jenny Frison
Genre: Horror, Drama

I’m not a fan of Hack/Slash.  I know, I know.  I reviewed Freddy vs Jason vs Ash, how can I like that and not love Hack/Slash?  I love the slasher genre.  I enjoy horror comics.  By all accounts I am exactly the sort of person that should be head over heels for Hack/Slash but I’m just not.  While there are a couple of stories I have enjoyed, on the whole I think it’s just ok.  So what does any of that have to do with Revival, you ask.  (Unless you already know in which case I have a Kudos for you.  Yes, the granola bar.)  Here’s the point.  Tim Seeley the writer/creator of Hack/Slash is the writer/co-creator on Revival.  That didn’t click for me until long after getting into Revival which is good because I might have passed on it.  Luckily, there were great teaser ads for this all over the series of tubes we call The Internet.  Image comics published various strange small town newspaper ads and articles that got me all excited.  So here I am today happily reading the series and reviewing it for you fine folks.

Revival takes place in the small town of Wausau, Wisconsin.  For some reason on January the 2^nd, the dead are beginning to rise from the grave.  The phenomenon so far seems limited to just Wausau and just to the recently dead.  These dead are not your typical zombies.  In fact, most of them seem completely normal.  You would never even know that they had died unless they told you.  Now Wausau, is the focus of national attention.  The town has been quarantined but people sit at the road blocks day and night hoping to get in and indulge in the miracle.  The people inside the town are just scrambling to try and understand what’s going on and dealing with their forced isolation.  All of this would be enough to cause drama but it seems the majority of Revivers, as they are called, came back a little wrong.  Some are even deadly.

Ma proves that amateur dentists are just as good as the kind with degrees.

One of the biggest draws of this series for me is also one of the few negatives (if you can even call it that): The characters.  This requires a little explanation.  Revival primarily focuses on the Cypress sisters.  Martha Ann Cypress is a college student with a bit of mystery surrounded her and Dana Cypress is a police officer who works for the girls’ father, Sheriff Wayne Cypress.  There is a sibling rivalry between Martha and Dana which primarily centers around their issues with their father.  Besides the Cypress family, there is Ibrahaim Ramin, the CDC Liaison; Blaine Abel, the exorcist/snowmobile repairman; May Tao, the fluff journalist who first reported on the Revival; and many more.  All of these characters are interesting.  The closer to the center of the series the more 3 dimensional they feel.  I have no complaint in that regard.  However, despite being well fleshed out, I can’t quite shake feeling like these are the exact characters you would see in Fargo or Twin Peaks or even The Killing.  It’s not necessarily bad. It’s just that sometimes I get the impression that Tim Seeley and Mike Norton said we’ll pull this character from over here and that character from over there until they had a fictional town full of people.  Still even if the cast doesn’t feel completely original, how they’ve been used and developed feels real.

Martha Ann describes her circumstances writing for NBC's Heroes.

When it comes to pacing, Revival has a slow burn that’s refreshing compared to the majority of modern comics.  A lot of the top selling comics need to punch something hard or blow something up every few pages.  Don’t get me wrong, Revival has action in it.  It is at least in part a horror comic after all but it’s not afraid to setup the atmosphere and set the burner to simmer.  Revival absolutely simmers.  A dash of mystery here, some intriguing character development there, set the range to low and wait.  We as the audience get to do what you always do in the presence of a cook with finesse; you sit back and hungrily anticipate.  The story is so well crafted and the characters are so intriguing that it was only later that I realized I didn’t feel any closer to finding out why the dead came back to life.  It doesn’t really matter because while this isn’t a zombie story per se, it does have something in common with the best undead fiction: It’s not concerned with why the dead rose.  At least, not yet.  Tim and Mike may have something in mind but truthfully, I would prefer a Y the Last Man ambiguity about it rather than a hard explanation. The real story is what happens after they rise not how it started.

When will rampant racism toward zombies stop?

Generally, I don’t like when a comic features a different cover artist than the interior artist.  I feel like this usually means one of three things.  A) Whoever is publishing the book doesn’t have enough faith in the interior artist’s work to sell, B) The interior artist doesn’t have the time to do draw the covers, or C) there’s an artistic motivation that oh the whole serves the series.  Now clearly, the reason can be a mixture of any of those three or some other consideration altogether.  More often than not I feel like it’s ‘A’, which is too bad really.  I like when I can look at a comic’s cover and know what I’m going to get on the inside.  With Revival so far, all covers have been by Jenny Frison with a couple variants by Craig Thompson.  Mike Norton is a strong artist.  His characters are distinct and they emote well. He’s got a good sense of panel layout and design.  He’s versatile. He can do engaging talking heads in on one page and a kinetic action sequence on the next. You couldn’t really ask for a better artist.  I’m not sure why he’s not doing the covers on this book but it feels like option ‘C’, the artistic choice.  Jenny Frison’s covers set an excellent tone at a glance and work in concert with Norton’s interior.  The covers and interiors feel unified rather than working against one another.

Revival is a book that needs more attention.  It’s certainly a rising star over at Image Comics but it’s not doing the kind of numbers that Batman or even Saga is.  But it should be.  Revival’s official site has the Free Comic Book Day preview from a year ago.  I’ve provided the link so please check it out and support this book.

Check Out the FreeComic Book Day Preview of Revival!

Grade: A