Advance Review: Protectors Inc. 1 by J. Michael Straczynski and Gordon Purcell

Protectors Inc. 1, out November 6 from Image, is the latest superhero title in the newly revived Joe's Comics line by J. Michael Straczynski. The book is competently though unspectacularly illustrated by Gordon Purcell. (Joe was giving out copies at his spotlight panel at New York Comic Con, the special cover for which by Michael Avon Oeming is pictured at right.)

The premier issue is pretty much all set-up, playing with the well-worn tropes of superhero fiction with a slight twist to it. The issue is framed by seemingly disparate disappearances of individuals in a flash of light, one, a CIA asset, the other, a girl coming out of a bar. The book is narrated by a District Attorney in Chicago, briefly going over the history of superpowered beings. Like many modern independent superhero books, Straczynski remixes the established ideas of superhero fiction into a fresh batch. The source of superpowers dates to a mysterious event in World War 2, with powers popping up around the world soon after. The 50 or so heroes, functionally immortal, called themselves Protectors, and would eventually incorporate and become media darlings, settling in big cities. But superpowered villains did not follow (as is usually the case in superhero stories). Occasionally heroes get into fights with each other, but these are usually just for show. The first time we see the Protectors is a flash in the sky as two of them tussle, and it's pretty cool. 

But even the re-imagined superhero mythos has become its own kind of cliche, and it takes something special to really stand out. And Protectors Inc. isn't that special (yet, anyway). Of course this is only the first issue, but many first chapters in serialized fiction (including many by Straczynski) avoid being as somewhat dull and largely unengaging as this. I am a fan of a lot of Straczynski's stuff, so based on how he tells stories there is much more likely to come, but what we get is just not exactly riveting or moving. But it is just 1/12th of a larger story that will hopefully come into focus later. Jupiter's Legacy, another modern superhero rejiggering, only really got interesting with the third issue (and at least it has Frank Quitely).

J. Michael Straczynski is going to have a ridiculously busy 2014 - this is the third new Joe's Comics title along with Sidekick and the delayed Ten Grand. In addition to work-for-hire books for Dynamite (Twilight Zone) and Dark Horse (Terminator) and a television series with the Wachowskis for Netflix (Sense8), he's also got Apocalypse Al and Dream Police with Sid Kotian, and two projects I'm looking forward to, Alone with Bill Sienkiewicz and the return of the wonderful Book of Lost Souls with Colleen Doran. But not everyone can bat a thousand. Middling art, which also effects Sidekick and may soon come to effect Ten Grand, certainly doesn't help.

I'm a long-time fan of Straczynski's stuff, so I'll stick with the book for now. Honestly, Protectors Inc. isn't that bad, it's just not all that great either. 

Advance Review: The Black Feather Falls by Ellen Lindner

The Black Feather Falls #1 by Ellen Lindner
Soaring Penguin Press/ACT-I-VATE, 2013

Ellen Lindner, NYC-based author of The Undertow and editor of The Strumpet anthology, will be releasing the first issue of her new 1920s murder mystery The Black Feather Falls next month to comic stores in the UK.

The comic opens, first-person, with American Tina Swift swigging from a flask in Cairo, reminiscing. We flash back to her time in postwar London working as a shopgirl in a nice part of town. She finds herself investigating the circumstances behind a mysterious death of a man found right outside her door. Part of her motivation is that the murdered man was one of the masses of war veterans forced to live homeless, unthanked, a death that the police aren't too keen on caring about. She goes to the offices of a newspaper editor, Mr. Pertwee, who seemed to promise her a job but flaked out on her. Pertwee is a no-show, but Pertwee's secretary, Ms. McInteer takes an interest and eventually Swift and McInteer agree to investigate the case.

The comic seems to start off promisingly as a slightly hardboiled period mystery but the overall execution doesn't quite hold together. Black Feather Falls is in the long tradition of the amateur detective, but the actual nuts and bolts of Swift's investigation are far too transparent. The minor story turns that drive the duo forward - the far-too coincidental connection between the victim and the absent Pertwee, or very conveniently running into someone who has a unique sweater that a friend of Swift's just happens to know about - it's all too neat, all too d.e.m.-y. I do like the setting, and the view of the recent Great War that still hurts like an open wound. And I really like Lindner's visual style (check out a few pages below). But I just don't think the art style really jives with the attempted tone of the story, nor that the tone consistently holds up.

Maybe when the story is finished I could be moved to recommend it, but the first chapter presented here is just too perfunctory and sloppily constructed. Perhaps if Lindner produced this as a graphic novel with the pacing such affords, she could have avoided the narrative traps she sets for herself here. But as a piece of serialized fiction, it just doesn't work.

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Lindner debuted The Black Feather Falls 1 this weekend at SPX, and it can be read online at ACT-I-VATE. The print comic will be released in the United Kingdom from Soaring Penguin Press and in the United States direct from the author at littlewhitebird.com on October 22.

Advance Review: Avengers: Endless Wartime by Warren Ellis and Mike McKone

Avengers: Endless Wartime
By Warren Ellis and Mike McKone
Marvel Comics, October 2013

Avengers: Endless Wartime, coming this October, is Marvel's first genuine go at capitalizing on the original graphic novel market that has otherwise passed them by. Marvel has tried OGNs in the past, namely the Season One graphic novels which retold various characters' origins, to absolutely no avail. Endless Wartime is clearly meant to capitalize on the crossover popularity of the Avengers franchise while telling a story set solidly in the 616 Marvel Universe, an in-continuity superhero OGN for the casual bookstore crowd. Sadly, the book is a complete dud.

With the surfeit of superhero material out there from the Big Two, surprisingly little is as pure graphic novels. Of course there are plenty of serialized stories that are collected as graphic novels (or trade paperbacks or what have you), but long form, non-serialized superhero graphic novels are few and far between. DC Comics made a huge splash with J. Michael Straczynski's Superman Earth One graphic novels, a critical and commercial success among superhero fans and general audiences alike. The qualities of the work by Straczynski and artist Shane Davis in their modern retelling of the Man of Steel's origin, as well as the unique pacing afforded to an OGN - where you don't have a forced story beat or cliffhanger every 22 pages or so - gave the book a decidedly fresh feel not replicated anywhere else in the mainstream. Marvel's Season One books were their transparent attempt at replicating Earth One's success, which is perhaps why they failed; trying to copy something jusy leaves you with a bad copy. Avengers: Endless Wartime, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Mike McKone, is but the first in a wave of "Marvel OGN" branded original graphic novels that take a decidedly different approach, featuring acclaimed creators tackling A-List properties telling accessible superhero stories in OGN format within the Marvel Universe proper.

And Endless Wartime certainly accomplishes most of this. The strengths in the work jump out right away. I have been highly critical of Marvel's graphic novel/collection program in the past, not just in terms of back catalog availability but also factors like production design. Often with Marvel's product, collections are just dumped into the market with little regard for the overall visual feel and long term viability of the finished product. DC is not much better. With the exception of writer/designer Jonathan Hickman's extraordinary work and the valiant efforts of the overworked and underfunded in-house design department, Marvel's cheap and quick ethos usually shows most in their collected editions. This is not the case with Endless Wartime, which features original production design from the prodigiously talented artist/designer Rian Hughes. Hughes' work designing a complete package - sleek, modern, and attractive - really makes the work jump out. So many original graphic novels outside the mainstream are complete productions where every facet outside just the cover and story matter, and Endless Wartime is the first Marvel book (aside from Hickman's) to accomplish this feel. And the qualities of Warren Ellis and Mike McKone as creators cannot be understated, and it is vital to have big guns on a work like this. I just wish the finished product reflected each creator's track record.

Colonel Carol Danvers, Captain Friggin' Marvel!

I've been on a bit of a Warren Ellis kick lately. (I am a huge fan of his usually amazing work across so many different genres.) I just read DC's new releases of his seminal Stormwatch/Authority output, a few months ago I reread his and John Cassaday's masterpiece Planetary, I just finally finished buying all the Transmetropolitan trades, and am about to finish rereading his wonderful Global Frequency. His Secret Avengers run from a couple of years ago and Nextwave with Stuart Immonen are some of my all-time favorite Marvel books. And so on, and so on. But Endless Wartime falls short by the two measures most important to a book like this, both as a stand-alone work and as a book set within the Marvel Universe.

The book has a promising opening with guerrilla mercenaries trying to destabilize a U.S.-friendly third world regime bitching about drone attacks ruining their warmongering. They manage to shoot down a newfangled sci-fi drone replete with US Air Force markings and alert the press. Captain America is watching this on teevee with Iron Man, Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers, hell yes), Hawkeye, Wolverine and Black Widow. After some research, he makes the connection to old Nazi voodoo in Scandinavia and Thor shows up connecting it to his old battles against some dragon worm thing that used to feed on the World Tree. Thor's pissed, Cap's pissed, and the Assembled Avengers hop in the Quinjet and go off to collect the drone. But they run into a bunch of living weapons; pieces of this evil Norse creature have been melded with U.S. weaponry into semi-autonomous artificially intelligent drones by a shady contractor and used for American geopolitical purposes. They double back to New York where the rest of these things are being staged and much battling ensues.

It's clear Endless Wartime is trying to have sly back-door commentary about the use of American power abroad, but the whole thing is just silly and falls flat. A ballsier move would be to explore the implications from the war torn opening pages, but instead the villainy is shunted off to closet Norse/Cthulhu Nazi changlings running megacorp military contractors manipulating back-door S.H.I.E.L.D. ops. Although S.H.I.E.L.D. is made to be the kindof-big-bads, the corruption really isn't governmental, it isn't corporate, it isn't military, it isn't even strictly human. Which isn't a problem in itself, it just doesn't work.

Warren Ellis has shown himself very adept at setting up and solving conflicts in short spaces - the aforementioned Global Frequency and Secret Avengers, for instance. And he nails the different pacing needed for an OGN. He does a fairly competent job of introducing each of the different characters, establishing their personalities and power sets. Each character has a moment to shine and more than a few one-liners. But the overall execution lacks. The monsters are dull, the motivations behind their use are tired. Even worse, the character interactions just get repetitive. Clint calls Steve an old man, Steve feels like a Man out of Time, Tony jokes about being rich and about the weird combination of shit they're battling, Tony's suit breaks down, Logan's gruff, Widow's badass, everyone rags on Clint, Clint can't fly the plane, then repeat all of this two or three times. And Ellis's cynical charm just breaks down into annoying verbal repetition with each character talking with the same undifferentiated attitude in the same insufferable way that Brian Michael Bendis far too often lurches towards where his characters all talk like Peter Parker (or perhaps Abumrad and Krulwich). As a self-contained, original work, Endless Wartime is tiresome and monotonous.


Marvel's preview... uh...  "motion comic" video thing, of Endless Wartime

Another gauge of the book's quality is how it works as a Marvel Universe book. Now, if Marvel is solely aiming for the non-cape comic crowd, it probably doesn't matter how the characters are presented. But the book is being marketed and presented as a Marvel Universe book - this is not the "Movie Avengers," after all, but the actual honest-to-goodness Avengers Avengers (Wolverine! Captain Marvel!). So it is important to apply additional judgement as such, within the confines of a shared superhero universe using characters established by years of storytelling. I'm less concerned about the dirty c-word - continuity - than established interpersonal dynamics which don't hold up to what we know of these characters. Wolverine, otherwise wonderfully presented never in-costume, is on edge and constantly whining about how he's a killer who's willing to do the dirty work and how Captain America and Thor are always on his case when they are never really on his case here. This ignores the long and respectful (if sometimes grudging) relationship with Steve Rogers, and makes him seem petulant, sticking it to Thor and Cap in some weird backhanded way. The characterization is just nonsense. And Bruce Banner, when he finally shows up, is presented as having no control over his Hulk powers. Ridiculously, Hulk apparently pops up on some silly schedule that the Avengers have to rush against. Bruce constantly, constantly talking about the Other Guy, the Other Guy being on some kind of schedule, and then crying when the Other Guy kills some mindless bioweapons is just dumb. Really, really dumb.

The failings of the story cannot help but hurt the art. To be fair, Mike McKone does a fine job with what he's given, but what he's given is visually dull, the monsters and villains and staging uninteresting at best. He nails the money shots: Hulk hulks, Captain Marvel shows, Thor throws (including a cool hammer/shield combo I don't think we've seen in an Avengers comic before). But when the story is as tired as this it takes some pretty magical visual astonishments to pull the story above its script and that just doesn't happen here. The muddy coloring certainly doesn't help either.

In contrast to their biggest competitor in DC, Marvel has a track record of taking risks in their creator-driven storytelling. And in contrast to DC, Marvel tends to be gutless and restrictive with their collected editions. Avengers: Endless Wartime flips the dynamic by telling a DC-mediocre story in a ballsy OGN release. Indeed, in an unusual step for a mainstream superhero comic, the book will be released globally - in comic stores and book stores domestically and in various international markets - on the same day, October 2. The look of the overall package and its very nature will certainly garner the book much attention. But Endless Wartime's middling, lackluster execution sadly does not match the Marvel OGN project's grand ambitions.

Advance Review: Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox

Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan & Nathan Fox
Scholastic Graphix, November 2013

Dogs have played a role in human affairs for 150 centuries, so it is no surprise that as long as humans have been at war, dogs have been at our side. In modern military parlance, they are Military Working Dogs. Similar to the use of dogs in civilian life, they play roles in search and rescue, law enforcement and the like. But military dogs also serve other roles. They are advance scouts, can sniff out bombs and booby traps, and go places humans can't. And just like pets in our lives, they are part of the family, man's best friend and an honored part of the military unit. In Dogs of War, a new original graphic novel coming out this November from Scholastic Grafix, writer Sheila Keenan and artist Nathan Fox tackle three stories from recent military conflicts that involved man's best friend in some of man's darkest hours.

The first chapter takes place in the trenches of the Western Front at the end of 1914. Focusing on a Scottish medic and his dog (Boots) who get separated from their unit, we are witness to the unrelenting mud and muck of tench warfare. Boots has been trained to sniff out survivors in the no-mans-land of the hell between the trenches, allowing medics to treat the wounded. Getting progressively better, the second chapter involves a secret U.S. air base in Greenland and one soldier's attempt to turn an unruly sled dog, Loki, into a valuable member of the small force plugging away above the arctic circle in early 1942. There is a suspenseful sequence involving a downed American plane and a race against the clock between German and American soldiers in white-out conditions.

But the best chapter is the third. Opening up in a small town in North Carolina in August 1968, a young boy and his dog befriend a Vietnam veteran. But the veteran, Lanford is troubled. Troubled by the war, troubled by what happened to him when he returned, troubled by what he left behind. We get glimpses of what Lanford went through in Vietnam with his Dog, Sheeba, interspersed with vignettes of the boy and his puppy interacting with Lanford back in the World. Where the main humans in the first two chapters are largely blank slates off which to bounce the dogs' stories, the Sheba chapter is about a palpably real person and the effect that one dog has had in his life. There is no tidy bow at the end of Lanford's story - the boy and his puppy do not cure him of his nightmares, the scars of what he saw and did and experienced just run too deep. But there may be hope for him in the future, and wherever his path may take him has been eased by his brief encounters with dogs of war, and dogs of peace.

In a graphic novel intended for middle school-aged kids, there is only so much blood and gore you can show. But Keenan and Fox do not shy away from the realities of the situations the soldier's and the dogs find themselves in. They manage to vividly capture the horror of trench warfare without getting too graphic. And they do not shy away from the even deeper mental turmoil of PTSD felt by so many of our soldiers after the confusing nightmare of Vietnam and its aftermath.

Sheila Keenan's writing is clear and straightforward, rife with historical detail, and Nathan Fox's art is expectedly superb, emotive, stylish and accessible. So often with such efforts, the results can seem overly academic or too toned down for the work to stand on its own, and the book has that feel in parts of the first two chapters. But thanks to the closing chapter and largely overall, Dogs of War is an entertaining and very well-made graphic novel intended for general audiences that adults can enjoy and slightly older kids can read while learning new things about history that may be not be in their history books. 
 
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PROCEDURAL NOTE: This is an advance review of an uncorrected proof of a graphic novel coming out in November October 16. What that means for me is that some parts weren't totally finished and it wasn't in color. What that means for you is... well, nothing. It's a good book, that's the important bit. Buy it now on Amazon here.

Advance Review: Silence & Co. by Benshemesh & Randall, Out May 29

Silence & Co
By Gur Benshemesh & Ron Randall
Crystal Productions, 2013

Silence & Co. is a new original graphic novel written (and, it seems, published) by newcomer Gur Benshemesh and illustrated by Ron Randall, coming out at the end of May. The story opens with Alexander Maranzano, a hit-man for a legendary New York Crime family rolling up on a federal judge in the dead of winter and putting a bullet in his head; the judge was prosecuting his father for something crime bossy. Alexander was raised by his uncle because he was the illegitimate son of his father and a Puerto Rican woman - as such he was largely disowned by his family but still does hits for them. A one time special forces military type, he heads to Marakesh to lay low from the heat. While chilling at the pool, he's approached by some cokehead assassin to run a quick job out there. After deftly handling it despite the myriad problems, the (now dead) cokehead's employers - some mysterious organization called Silence & Co. - hire Alexander for an elaborate hit on a Colombian drug lord, for the unreal sum of ten million dollars. This all happens fairly quickly, and it was at this point that the story devolves into a complete mess.

Now to be clear, the story is cohesive, the stakes clear, the action straightforward. But it strains, if not outright breaks, the suspension of disbelief. Silence & Co. hire Alexander, who is a family hitman and not a free agent, but whatever, and offer to pay him the completely unbelievable sum to coordinate the hit on the drug-lord, when it becomes obvious that Silence & Co. are more than capable of handling the operation themselves. The operation itself is this insane over-the-top military assault featuring attack helicopters and dozens of paramilitaries. The story, which started out as a promising noir about a disillusioned hitman becomes this ridiculous and completely unnecessary wargasm. And then naturally there are double crosses and a pretty girl Alexander refuses to kill. See, the pretty girl is the mistress/accountant of the crime boss, so that somehow makes her a civilian, and Alexander doesn't kill civilians, although he does kill lots and lots of worker bees in the crime organization, but she's a pretty girl so she gets a pass. Oh! And also, not only was Alexander a military special forces officer but he was ALSO some kind of secret super-hacker for the government and at one point he creates some kind of superworm that infiltrates and wipes out the computers of some crime organization that's been around for centuries. And despite being a known assassin he's given control of an Internal Affairs sting on an FBI senior agent. And then there's more double crosses. And then, and then, and then. And then. Sometimes too much is too much.

Ron Randall's black-and-white art is decent, though there is one silly splash page that seems like something swiped from a Kirby Sgt. Fury issue. His stuff is stronger in the straightforward noir scenes but can't quite live up to the inanity/insanity of the war-stuff. Randall doesn't receive any kind of cover credit which is frankly unacceptable. I guess Benshemesh - who has not previously written anything and is also credited here as "producer" - paid for everything and is publishing it himself, but that doesn't make you the sole author, dude. There are also odd bits about the final product, like the needless use of quotes within the narration captions and the use of asterisks with explanatory captions noting that the characters are speaking Spanish in every single word balloon that characters speak Spanish. Amateur foolishness like that almost seems like a parody (not to mention easily caught production mistakes like comas where apostrophes should be).

Silence & Co. is a self-published vanity graphic novel from a writer who is not frankly ready for prime-time. Maybe if he held back and did a New York crime story instead of throwing all that spaghetti at the wall it would have been a stronger work. In the first few pages I honestly thought the comic would be a nice follow up to fill the void left by the superb hitman graphic novels from Europe, The Killer. But in the end I was just left thirsting for more of the subtle, psychological international thrillers in Matz & Luc Jacamon's killer Killer to clear the bad taste left by this repeatedly sharkjumping mess.

Silence & Co. will be released to comic shops on May 29. For more visit http://www.silenceandco.com

Exclusive Review: Ark by Peter Dabbene and Ryan Bayliss

Ark by Peter Dabbene & Ryan Bayliss
Arcana, 2013

Ark, written by Peter Dabbene and illustrated by Ryan Bayliss is a new graphic novel coming out in the Fall from Arcana Comics, available for download via Comixology this Wednesday, March 27.

Unfortunately, it is quite dreadful. A sci-fi story about a group of humans and sentient human-animal hybrids sent into space 13 years ago, communications from Earth are suddenly and mysteriously cut off. Up until this point, the passengers were split between human crew and hybrid passengers. The hybrids are all very silly combinations of animal (and even plant) and human characteristics. The social structure of the ship isn't very believable for a group of people living together for over a decade. The mystery of the hybrids' presence on the mission and the reason for the cutoff from Earth is revealed like a brick through a window, and some ludicrous shit goes down including a couple of murders and a revolt for good measure. Nothing about this comic, neither the story and nor the art, are remotely capable of meeting the suspension of disbelief necessary to get through its 140 pages. The exposition (and the sci part of the sci-fi) and the art throughout is hamfisted and sloppy at best. The characterizations are as one-dimensional as the art. This is a pretty dumb, poorly illustrated comic.

The download price when it goes live on Wednesday is $4.99, and there are worse things you can blow your money on in comics. Many mainstream work-for-hire comics at the same price aren't any better than this, and at the very least you're getting a whole original graphic novel and supporting independent comics. The creators get a grade for effort, but trying is not always succeeding. And potential readers would be better off trying something else.