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

On the Rack Podcast

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to make a guest appearance on Death Ray Comics’ new podcast, On the Rack.  On the Rack focuses on what’s new in comics each week.  Death Ray Comics’ owner and On the Rack’s host/producer is Trent Hunsaker.  I met Trent at a pub trivia he ran that was sponsored by his other podcast Zeros N’ Heroes.  Clearly, Trent is a busy man.

Trent and I were also joined by Steve Kent.  Mr. Kent is very knowledgeable about all things comic and has appeared occasionally on both On the Rack and Zeros N’ Heroes.  We all discuss various up coming comics some superhero related and some not.  I've highlighted my picks for the week below.

There were some technical difficulties as Trent explains on the podcast so unfortunately the first half of the recording was lost but hopefully you folks at home will still enjoy listening to it.

Catch the podcast here!

Here are my comic picks for the week:

• Nowhere Men 5 from Image Comics (missing due to technical difficulties)
•  Revival 10 from Image Comics (a review of Revival vol. 1: You’re Among Friends is forthcoming)
• Occupy Comics 1 from Black Mask Studios
•  Invincible Universe 1 also from Image Comics (An excellent superhero book but a bit outside the scope of this blog and thus it is not pictured below. )

Thanks for stopping in and be sure to listen to my podcast debut.  I’ll be sure to post any future appearances.

Trent’s Hunsaker’s Apart of Him Podcast Network 

Death Ray Comics on Facebook 

We Can Fix It! A Time Travel Memoir

Title: We Can Fix It! A Time Travel Memoir

Series: Original Graphic Novel

Publisher: Top Shelf Productions

Publication Date: May 2013

Creative Team: 

            Writer/Artist: Jess Fink

Genre: Sci-Fi, Memoir

I’m a sucker for a time travel story.  If time travel was steak, I would be on my 32^nd heart attack (one for every year of life).  I saw the words “Time Travel Memoir” and without further consideration, I bought it.  See?  Sucker.  Luckily, my 7 bucks at Comixology were not spent in vain.  After reading this highly entertaining time travel memoir, I figured I would study up on what else Ms. Fink has been up too.  As far as I could tell, We Can Fix It! is Jess’ only non erotic comics work.  Having said that, the comic is still sexually charged but in a soft ‘R’ college movie sort of way.  So if that is not your cup of tea, you have been warned.  All in all, I think We Can Fix It! is a very unapologetic self aware work.  Jess Fink knows who she is. 

Don't worry your secrets are my secrets are your secrets....right?

The premise of the comic is pretty simple.  Jess Fink has a time machine.  I think we all like to kid ourselves that if we could travel through time we would endeavor to better the world somehow.  Some people think they would kill Adolf Hitler, others would save a loved one from peril, and still others would correct a long regretted mistake.  However, Jess’ goal is probably a bit more realistic. She’s going to visit her past and make out with it!  Sort of like a personal greatest sexual escapades world tour.  That could have been the whole plot but Jess soon discovers that reliving (and occasionally joining in) with her sexist moments is not as pleasant as it sounds.

Guitar sounds are the harbinger of all sexy things.

We Can Fix It! deals with the erroneous nature of memory in a playful way.  Jess, like all of us, remembers the events of her life differently depending on her mood.  At first, she remembers the moments of her sexual awakening as intense and wonderful but quickly realizes that they were awkward and a bit embarrassing. (I doubt there is an adult alive who can’t relate to that).  Finding her journey unexpectedly depressing, she decides to rethink her trip.  She starts to visit moments she remembers going poorly hoping to be pleasantly surprised.  Finding that they aren’t any better she decides that…She Can Fix It! (that’s almost the title).  Before long she’s zipping back and forth across her life trying to smooth out the rough patches.  We’re shown everything from Jess taking ‘sexy’ (awkward) pictures for a boy to an especially bratty encounter with her hard working single mother.  Eventually after having little luck with the smaller moments she tries to fix the big ones.  It’s heart breaking watching an especially dark moment involving her estranged father.  While hoping from the ridiculous to the tragic nothing feels out of place.  Jess easily manages to maintain a uniformity of tone.  By the end Jess has learned what we all eventually have to come to terms with: all our experiences, even the horrible ones, make us who we are.  It’s more important to look to the future than to dwell on the past.

This generally light-hearted story does momentarily get dark.

At first glance, We Can Fix It! feels like it was torn from the pages of someone’s high school notebook.  The art work looks like it was entirely produced with a standard lead pencil.  I’m not sure if that’s truly the case or if she achieved that look by some other process.  When an artist has a more simplistic style I always wonder if that’s the best they can manage or a stylistic choice.  With Ms. Fink, I assume it’s the later.  She seems to have a good grasp of anatomy and has fun caricaturizing it.  Her style is entertaining and doodle-esque which fits well with the time period of her life that’s being covered.  It helps to maintain a light playful tone.  The art, like the story, doesn't take itself too seriously.

Past Jess trying to make sense of drunk night watching Bio-dome.

All in all, We Can Fix It! was a fun ride.  I realized that I’m close to the same age as Jess so I easily related to some of the quirks of being a kid in the 90s.  Sure, there were spots that were awkward, juvenile, and weird but that’s a lot of what life is when you’re growing up.  I’ll be keeping an eye out for what Jess Fink does next.

Paradox free time travel.  That's Allstate's stand.

Grade: B+

R.I.P.D.

Title: R.I.P.D.

Series: Mini Series

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Publication Date: 1999 (Miniseries) 2003 (Trade)

Creative Team:
            Writer: Peter M. Lenkov
            Artist: Lucas Marangon

Inks: Randy Emberlin
            Colors: Dave Nestelle

Genre: Afterlife, Cop Drama, Black Comedy

I’ve never been afraid to ask a stupid question about the mechanics of a fiction world. (Embarrassed afterward? Maybe.)  For instance in Toy Story, Why do all the toys accept as a rule that they cannot reveal that they are alive?  Who made that rule?  Why do they all follow it?  Why does Buzz Lightyear follow it when he doesn’t believe he’s a toy?  I digress.  Sure Toy Story isn’t a work of great philosophical depth.  It’s not intended to spark questions of how the world functions.  It’s just supposed to be our world with another fairly simple layer on top.  RIPD hit me similarly.  Not that it’s about toys or even simple but it inspired me to ask a lot of questions about how it all works.

I don't want to know but I do.  I'm confused and scared.

The premise of RIPD is simple enough really.  Nicholas Cruz is a good cop who dies.  Once he’s dead he gets recruited to be a cop for the Rest In Peace Department (RIPD).  He’s tasked with catching demons, ghosts, and other supernatural business but before all that he has to solve his murder.  See? Simple-ish.  The plot doesn’t get much more complex than that but what made it interesting (or infuriating) to me were the implications in the background.  For instance, Nick is a rookie cop so of course he needs to be partnered with a grizzled vet close to retirement whose last partner died on the job.  It’s a cop story, that’s pretty much how they work.  That partner is Sheriff Roy Powell.  Roy is dead just like Nick and Roy’s older partner McKenzie was dead too…and then McKenzie went and died some more.  So, if you’re dead already and you die again then what?  RIPD doesn’t give us a very clear answer.  There is a Heaven and Hell in this mythos and we’re told when Roy retires he’ll go to Heaven.  So when McKenzie died for the second time did he go to Heaven or just cease to exist?  The demon killed in the same scene clearly went back to Hell.  Anyhow, it bugged me but I like to over think things (like Toy Story for instance).  But as one of RIPD’s characters says, “Don’t sweat the details, kid”.

Men without necks don't need writing on their business cards.

The story relies on a handful of clichés to set up our characters.  Nick before dying is the standard young hotheaded cop.  He dies and leaves behind a hot young widow, daughter, and dog.  Nick also had a partner that was like a brother who’s going to do his best to watch over Nick’s family.  Roy is a rough around the edges cowboy and as I have mentioned soon to retire.  Since Nick is going to be a cop in the afterlife he’s got to get there by being murdered.  After all, what’s the fun of following a dead character if they can’t solve their own murder?  It’s not to say that RIPD isn’t fun it’s just not new.  There really isn’t any innovation.  It feels like supernatural Men in Black.

They might make this look good but they don't produce music videos.

RIPD is only a 4 issue miniseries so it doesn’t have a lot of time to introduce us to the characters or the world.  This is maybe why so many clichés were relied upon to get past the setup quickly and move on to the plot.  The story moves along at a fairly quick pace and never gets boring.  Peter Lenkov has worked as a writer and producer in television since the 90s.  He helped developed and is currently an Executive Producer on the reboot of Hawaii Five-0.  I think this explains why RIPD feels so much like a TV pilot.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was a rejected TV pitch that Lenkov decided to turn into a comic.  It certainly feels like a concept that could easily be mined for an off-kilter story of the week police procedural.  It’d be like Hawaii 666.  With the recent movie adaptation anything could happen.

Book 'Em Danno!

The art work in RIPD is just fun.  It fits the story nicely by setting a tone that’s not too serious.  If this comic had been drawn by someone like Jim Lee or Alex Maleev it would have been horrible.  However, to just look at Marangon’s art work you can tell he must have had a blast drawing this thing.  His characters have a cartoony feel to them.  I have no trouble imagining this book as a 90s Saturday morning cartoon show.  It could air between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men without missing a beat.  I almost had to restrain myself from grabbing a pair of footy pajamas and bowl of Fruit Loops.

The Fashion Police start using Lethal Force.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book well enough but I just wasn’t impressed by it.  I figured with the movie coming out soon it was about time I checked it out.  If they change the story a bit while adapting it for the silver screen, I won’t care one bit.  The trailer has already hilariously illustrated that the dead cops don’t appear like they did when they were alive but there is nothing of the sort in the comic.  My hope is that the movie fixes what was bad about the source material.  I guess I’ll have to wait and see.  I wouldn’t suggest buying RIPD but if you know someone that owns it or have a local library that carries it check it out.  It’s a quick read and I have certainly read worse.

So you're telling me you died in True Grit and woke up here?

Grade: C+