Marvel’s “Star Wars” #1 Is An Exercise In Mediocrity

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

I take a look at the much-anticipated first issue of Marvel’s new monthly “Star Wars” comic series.

So this is it. After months of relentless hype and build-up, the opening salvo of Dis/Mar’s full-spectrum Star Wars dominance has arrived in the form of the new Star Wars #1 from Marvel Comics. Get ready for more, of course — the year-long lead-up to the new SW flick, The Force Awakens, is going to get positively deafening. We’ve only just begun.

And the four-color page seems a natural enough place to start things off, given that the second Disney purchased Lucasfilm lock, stock, and barrel it was obvious where the Star Wars license was going to go once Dark Horse’s deal for the property expired at the end of 2014. Marvel is using “back home” as their motto not only for this series, but the solo series featuring Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, et. al. to come, and while it’s true that they were the…

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Late To The Party : “Nightcrawler”

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Better late than never, I take a look at “Nightcrawler.”

Trash Film Guru

I don’t know if you watched the late local news tonight (I didn’t, I was at the movies — can you guess what I was seeing?), but odds are good that if you did, there was a psychopath in front of the camera waving a gun or a knife around, particularly if you live in a major urban area like New York or Los Angeles. Guys like that seem to be a dime a dozen these days, and sometimes they even wear uniforms and badges.

Well, writer/director Dan Gilroy seems to have hit on a nifty little twist to that scenario for his new(-ish) film, Nightcrawler — what if you put the psychopath behind the camera?

Louis Bloom (played with considerable relish by Jake Gyllenhaal) is our high-tech Travis Bickle, a guy with little formal education but a lot of drive who’s landed on hard times in our supposedly “recovering”…

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Late To The Party : “Gone Girl”

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Better late than never, I take a look at David Fincher’s “Gone Girl.”

Trash Film Guru

I’m going to proceed with a fair degree of caution as I write this, and you should probably do the same while reading it, because I’m about to level a pretty serious charge at a film I generally liked, and try to avoid too much by way of “spoilers” while doing so, even though it’s a pretty safe bet that almost anyone who’s interested in seeing David Fincher’s highly-acclaimed Gone Girl has probably already done so. Why the tip-toeing, then? Well — call it a courtesy simply because, hey, not everyone has seen it yet, as evidenced by the fact that I just caught it at the local discount house (the Riverview in Minneapolis, for those interested in such details) tonight and the joynt was packed to the rafters.

First, the good : Fincher is certainly in top form stylistically here, and handles both his actors, and his admittedly combustible…

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“Wolf Moon” Is Worth Howling About

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Holy shit — whoever thought cartooning would turn out to be one of the world’s most dangerous occupations?

The comics world is obviously in a state of shock and mourning — as is, indeed, much of the world in general — following the brutal murder of 12 employees of a well-regarded French satirical newspaper, four of whom were cartoonists, presumably by a handful of armed, masked Islamic fundamentalist extremists earlier today, and while now probably wouldn’t be the best time to comment on the wider cultural, as well as socio-political, implications of this shocking mass murder, let me just say that a climate of fear and ignorance is usually at the root of violent acts of intimidation like this, and that whatever Muslims you may know personally are more than likely to be just as horrified and appalled at today’s events as you are, if not moreso, because chances are they’ll be treated with an even greater level of undeserved suspicion than they already are. It’s probably no secret to those of you who read my posts even semi-regularly that I’m not a big fan of any religious belief system of any sort, but we didn’t go around treating Catholics like shit after IRA bombings in the UK and we should extend that same courtesy to Muslims here in the US, who had absolutely nothing to do with this insanely brutal crime.

I would also hope that it should go without saying that an act based in fear and ignorance shouldn’t be responded to with fear and ignorance, since all that does is up the ante, so let’s hope the French government doesn’t decide that the best way to deal with this is by, I dunno — invading countries that had nothing to do with it and torturing non-existent “information” out of impoverished goat herders and random street kids.

Really — no government would be that stupid, would they? Errrrrr—- wait a sec —

In any case, the good news is that the owner of the paper in Paris has said that he will not be intimidated by this act and that he’s going to continue publishing. That much we can all agree upon as being both courageous, and the right thing to do.

Still, the tone of discussion at my local comic shop was definitely somber today, and our thoughts go out to all affected by this tragedy. Fortunately, after a couple of depressing hours in front of the tube watching these events unfold, I was able to distract myself with my new pile of purchases today, some of which were even — gasp! — good, the standout among them being the second issue of writer Cullen Bunn and artist Jeremy Haun’s new six-part horror series from Vertigo, Wolf Moon.

Bunn, of course, has been a talent well worth keeping an eye on for some time, with The Sixth Gun from Oni Press and his recently-completed The Empty Man from Boom! Studios garnering extremely positive reviews — hell, folks even tell me that his work on Marvel’s ongoing Magneto monthly is pretty good stuff — while Haun, for his part, seems to be a guy whose work everyone likes a lot, but who hasn’t found a steady gig month-in-and-month-out since leaving DC’s Batwoman along with J.H. Williams III due to editorial short-sightedness of the highest order (it’s probably worth noting that the creators Williams and Haun were replaced with on Batwoman have driven the book down so far so fast that it was recently cancelled). Pair these two with veteran colorist Lee Loughride, then, and I think it’s fair to see that we’re looking at an “A-list” assemblage of talent here.

And hey — isn’t it about time that Vertigo got back to doing some honest-to-goodness horror comics, anyway? I mean, for a line that was built on titles like Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, and Sandman (which was widely considered to be a horror book before the term “dark fantasy” was in common parlance), they sure seem to have done their level best to avoid the genre in recent years.

Fortunately for us all, that drought appears to be over, and Bunn and Haun are crafting a very tense and atmospheric werewolf-story-with-a-twist here — that twist being that the werewolf spirit passes on from one victim to the next rather than staying put in a single host the whole time. The second issue even expands on this theory as our protagonist/former werewolf host, Dillon Chase — who’s on something of a holy mission to stop the wolf spirit before it kills again — gets in touch with a scholar on the subject (and former host himself) who posits a connection between lycanthropy and Native American “skin walker” legends.

The breezy scripting style Bunn employs and Haun’s tight, no-frills, character-focused art both have something of an “old school horror comic” feel to them, and you could just as easily imagine this book being drawn by the likes of, say, Tom Sutton, if he were still with us, or Bernie Wrightson, if his health were good enough, and while I don’t mean to say that our guy Jeremy’s work is “as good as” the legendary output of those two masters of the medium, it certainly works for this series despite the lack of intricate linework those just-mentioned names (along with others like Mike Ploog) almost always brought to the table.

In short, it’s suitably creepy and meshes well with an equally-creepy script. The covers so far have been top-notch, as well, with Jae Lee — whose work I usually actively dislike — capturing the look and feel of the act of werewolf transformation quite nicely with the main cover to issue one, Haun giving us something of a “drifter movie”-inspired variant for that issue, and Ryan Kelly doing great justice to both our protagonist and his migrating-werewolf adversary with his much-more-imaginatively-constructed-than-action-pose-images-usually-are cover for the second installment.

Honestly, I’m digging this book so much at this (admittedly early) juncture that my only gripe is the $3.99 cover price. Yeah, at least DC/Vertigo give you a high-gloss cover and a little bit better paper stock on their four dollar books than Marvel’s cheap-ass, melt-all-over-your-hands monthly product, but still — I’d sacrifice the spiffy package for a $2.99 price point on this title in a minute. “It costs too damn much” is a charge you can level at pretty much every comic coming out these days, though, so if that’s the only knock I can come up with against Wolf Moon, odds are that this is one book you should definitely check out.

Grant Morrison Channels His Inner Philip K. Dick In “Annihilator”

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

You’re never gonna believe me when I say this given how mercilessly I’ve been shilling for the guy’s recent work, but — I’m honestly not the world’s biggest Grant Morrison fan. As is the case with out esteemed fellow TTSL scribe Arleigh, his work has always been very much a “hit-or-miss” affair with me, and while I loved The Invsibles, The Filth, and his now-legendary runs on Animal Man and Doom Patrol, a lot of his more-celebrated efforts — such as his runs on JLA, New X-Men, and even Batman — were decidedly “meh” affairs in my book, that certainly never veered into actively bad territory but were, nevertheless, largely unmemorable. They had their moments, of that there’s no doubt, but I felt that they were too few and far between to really stand out all that much.

And we won’t even mention his flat-out offensive analysis of the super-hero phenomenon in general, Supergods, which dubiously posited that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were not, in fact, the creators of Superman, but merely the human vessels through which this timeless ideal that was floating around in the ether decided to express itself. Guess DC doesn’t owe either of them a dime, then, do they, Grant?

Still, I gotta call it like I see it, and despite the fact that I don’t have much reason to “root” for Morrison personally, it can’t be denied that he’s in the midst of arguably his strongest period as a creator right now, and I don’t say that simply because of the runaway artistic and commercial success that is The Multiversity (although that’s a big part of it, to be sure) — I also say it because, flying far underneath the the cover of hype generated by that blockbuster project (hype which I’m guilty of contributing to in my own small way with my glowing reviews for its last couple of issues), there’s a little six-part series he’s doing with artist extraordinaire Frazer Irving for Legendary Comics called Annihilator that’s flat-out blowing the minds of the (apparently) few of us who are reading it.

I’ve gotta be honest here — I have no idea why this book isn’t generating a more significant level of “buzz” than it’s managed to so far : maybe it’s because for all their Hollywood dollars and clout Legendary doesn’t seem to be putting much promotional muscle behind their comics line; maybe it’s because the subject matter of the series is too outre for all but the most hardened sci-fi fans to wrap their heads around; maybe it’s because neither of the main characters in the story are in any way “likable”; maybe it’s because The Multiversity is sucking all the oxygen out of the room when it comes to current Morrison work and there’s just not much energy left to heap praise on this title; or maybe it’s some combination of all those elements.

Whatever the case may be, though, it’s kind of a bummer, because four parts in it’s apparent that this is one of the most complex, challenging, interesting, and fun projects to come down the pipeline this year and would definitely be a shoo-in to be near the top of any “Top 10 Comics Of 2014” list I would cobble together if such rankings interested me in any way — which they don’t.

Think about it for a second : here we’ve got a veteran writer (ranked as the number two comics author of all time in the CBR poll that was just released earlier today — oh yeah, what was it I just said about not caring about “best of” lists again?) operating at the top of his game paired up with an up-and-coming “hot property” artist who’s doing career-defining work with this series and yet the whole thing seems to be going more or less unnoticed and is selling only a fraction of the number of copies each month of middling super-hero fare like, I dunno, Batwoman or Cyclops — both of which were recently cancelled by DC and Marvel, respectively, due to low sales. Something just ain’t right with this picture.

Well, never let it be said that I’m unwilling to get up on my soapbox and cheerlead for a comic that not enough people are paying attention to, because I’m here to tell you that if you like superbly-illustrated, high-concept, Philip K. Dick-style fuck-with-your-head science fiction, then you absolutely have to get caught up on Annihilator right now.

Here’s a brief rundown of the particulars just to whet your appetite : Ray Spass (pronounced “space”) is an asshole. A Hollwood screenwriter whose career trajectory is headed straight down, he hopes to get back on the “A List” with his new project, which is a script (called , you guessed it, “Annihilator”) about another asshole, a formerly-high-flying intergalatic criminal named Max Nomax who is imprisoned in orbit around the black hole ( named — wait for it — “The Annihilator”) at the center of the Milky Way and is using his time there to try to bring the love of his life back from the dead.

You have to hand it to Max — he doesn’t think small. The problem is, he doesn’t know how his story ends, and in order to find out, he has to become real, and pay a visit to his writer.

The first three issues really cause the reader to question how much of this is really happening and how much is the result of fevered hallucinations brought on by an inoperable brain tumor that’s afflicting Ray, and while the fourth chapter goes some way toward resolving that question, it raises plenty of new ones at the same time, chief among them — okay, if this is real, and Max needs Ray to keep working on his script in order to lay out the course of his life for him, then how is it happening — and why?

Intrigued yet? I can assure you that my brief synopsis only skims the surface of all that’s happening here, and that this is a book that certainly rewards multiple re-reads as it goes about laying its foundation of carefully-constructed twists and turns. It’s hard to say at this just-beyond-mid-way point how many seemingly disparate elements will be woven into the final pattern that Morrison is knitting here and how many will turn out to be throwaway “red herrings,” but my money is on “everything here matters in some way, shape, or form, and not even the smallest detail will go to waste once it’s all said and done,” as each successive installment to date has proven to be a further measured layer of intricacies built upon what’s gone before. A picture that began as convoluted is coming into view more clearly as events progress, even if it’s still largely obscured and even if, as just mentioned, every answer has a tendency to elicit about a dozen new questions.

And yet for all that story awesome-ness, I’m still not prepared to say whether or not the (admittedly superb) writing is the real “star” of the show here, though, so polished and expressive is Irving’s art. I’d kill for an original page or two — any original page or two — from this series, as they’re all flat-out breathtaking and of “suitable for framing” quality. If you’re a big time “art geek” like I am, prepare to spend a lot of time “ooh”ing and “aah” ing to the — no exaggeration — unfolding series of wonders on display here. Irving has gone from being a “guy to watch” to a “guy to follow” to a “guy others will no doubt try to imitate” over the short space of four months (oh yeah, did I mention that each issue so far has even managed to come out on time?), and you might as well get used to his name, because you’re bound to be hearing it a lot in the years to come.

I think I’ve pretty well exhausted my supply of compliments and superlatives at this point, so — yeah. Annihilator. Get it. Now.

Oh, and tell your friends, too — it”s not too late to build some genuine momentum for this book as it steamrolls headlong toward what’s sure to be a memorable conclusion.

“The Multiversity : Thunderworld Adventures” #1 — Grant Morrison’s Love Letter To C.C. Beck

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

If there’s one criticism that’s been leveled at Grant Morrison — and British comics writers in general — over the years, it’s that their work, while admittedly literate and intelligent, is often too “dark” or “cynical.” I guess sometimes it does apply — I mean, The Invisibles and The Filth , to name just a couple of standout Morrison projects, weren’t exactly light-hearted, happy-go-lucky affairs, were they?

And yet — even those two comics, bleak and nihilistic as they could often be, ultimately had optimistic endings, didn’t they? And books like Animal Man and All-Star Superman were flat-out celebrations of the type of comic book storytelling that the “British invasion” of the 1980s supposedly put an end to (as a side note, Alan Moore gets called out onto the carpet for the “darkness” of his work a lot, as well, yet the same guy who gave us From Hell also gave us the most majestic tribute to the Superman of old ever conceived with his downright mythic run on Supreme and years earlier gave us arguably the single-greatest Superman story of all, “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? ” — hell, even Watchmen had a more optimistic conclusion than most folks give it credit for). All in all, then, when it comes to Morrison’s career arc, it’s probably more fair to say that even when things do get “dark” and/or “dystopian” (anybody reading Annihilator right now? You really should be), it’s usually only a matter of time until we get to the light.

That’s why I was a bit confused over some of the hand-wringing that was going on prior to his much-anticipated Captain Marvel (or Shazam!, if you must) story for The Multiversity. People were openly questioning whether or not his “style” would be the right fit for the character. Whether or not he could “do it justice.” Whether or not he could “bring back that 1950s-style magic and innocence.”

Well, The Multiversity : Thunderworld Adventures #1 came out last Wednesday, and it’s fair to say that all those concerns have been silenced in the days since, because this is probably the most heartfelt, endearing, spot-on adventure for The Big Red Cheese since C.C. Beck chronicled his exploits for Fawcett publications. No hyperbole, no bullshit — everything you were hoping this issue would be, it is.

Off we go, then, to Earth-5, which is apparently where Captain Marvel (and I bet we don’t see him referred to by that name anytime again too soon) as he ought to be — instead of the angst-ridden, more “realistic” version of him we’ve been subjected to in the “New 52” universe — still exists, along with the rest of the Marvel family, and still does battle with the likes of Black Adam, Mr. Mind, The Monster Society Of Evil, and the villain of this story, Dr. Sivana, who has created a doppleganger “Sivana Family” and added an eighth day to the week, thanks to time and power siphoned away from other realities in the Multiverse.

That “cynicism” people were fretting about? It’s nowhere to be found here, as this is pure Beck-style storytelling all the way : imaginative, character-driven, idealistic, and action-packed. Heck, Morrison even gets the little touches right, such as when he gives us the first appearance in forever and a day of the non-super-powered Uncle Marvel, and continues the tradition of him pretending to have powers and everybody else knowing he doesn’t but humoring him anyway. There’s not a note missed, not a beat skipped. This is a majestic old-school comic book adventure that doesn’t even feel so much like an homage as it does a direct continuation of a story abandoned over 50 years ago (you know, when DC sued Fawcett right out of business for their flagship character’s “similarity” to Superman — then bought up his rights for a pittance).

It may flirt with overkill sometimes, I suppose, but even after two readings I remain more than happy to put that tiny concern aside, simply because there’s nothing in the least bit “post-ironic” — much less ironic — about what Morrison is doing here. Every page, every panel, every word bubble — it’s all coming from the heart, without any sort of “knowing wink at the audience” to be had. Much as I liked All-Star Superman, it still had elements of a 12-part funeral dirge to it, a “last story of this type that’s ever going to be told” vibe. There’s none of that on display here, even if we probably won’t see a comic quite like this one — at least from DC — again in our lifetimes.

It also represents a 180-degree turn from the more nihilistic — but every bit as well-executed — tone taken with this series’ last “one-shot” issue, the magnificently rich and complex Pax Americana, yet while the two stories couldn’t be further apart in terms of style, this one is just as compelling that modern masterwork despite being infinitely “simpler” and more straightforward. The two issues coming out back-to-back as they have certainly highlights the diversity of Morrison’s writing ability, of course, but also the diversity inherent in The Multiversity project itself — a series where, truly, any story can be told in any given month. We hear that said — usually in hype generated by the publishers — about lots of comics, I suppose, but in this case, it’s proving to be absolutely true, and while Thunderworld Adventures does, in fact, make a few more concessions to the overall narrative connecting all of these disparate books than Pax Americana did, rest assured that it can still be read as a “stand-alone” story just fine.

About the only concession made here to the kind of “mind-fuckery” our guy Grant likes to engage in is a trippy double-page splash (one that’s so awesome to behold that I can’t bring myself to “spoil” it by including a preview image here, sorry) that doesn’t make much rational “sense” but certainly fits in with the overall tone of the proceedings very nicely indeed. Apart from that, though, all else in the world of Billy Batson and his magically-powered alter ego is more or less exactly as you remembered — maybe even better,

Speaking of the art — Cameron Stewart, who provides both pencils and inks for this issue, is a guy I’ve never considered to be anything other than a competent journeyman artist, providing good, but hardly memorable, work for a number of titles over the years, including several projects with Morrison like Seaguy and Batman And Robin (he’s currently the regular penciler on DC’s recently-revamped Batgirl monthly series), but damn if this isn’t the comic he was born to draw. Just look at that panel reproduced above showing a car smashing into Captain Marvel for a prime example of the dynamic and impactful sensibility he brings to the table here. I get the feeling that he spent several months working on this book, and if he didn’t — well, shit, then I guess I’m even more impressed, because none of the trademarks of a “rush job” are apparent here in any way. This is bold, breathtaking stuff that has me reconsidering his entire body of work in a whole new light. You might even say that he’s unleashed his inner super-hero here.

And the colors — man oh man, the colors! It’s hard to believe this is the same Nathan Fairbairn who gave us the more muted tones of Pax Americana as everything here is bright, vibrant, eye-catching, and just plain sunny. Earth-5 literally looks like a place where it never rains. Just have a look at the triumphant panel the story ends on here and you’ll see exactly what I mean —

That, right there, is why most of us who fell in love with the comics medium as kids did so, isn’t it? Even if these characters were a bit “before our time” for most of us, it was the spirit of idealistic adventure that drew us in and that we all wish we’d see more of these days. In my headline for this review I called Thunderworld Adventures Morrison’s “love letter to C.C. Beck” (it’s worth noting that Alan Moore has pointed to Beck as being his primary storytelling influence on Supreme, as well), and while that’s undoubtedly true, there’s actually more to it than that — it’s a love letter to youth, optimism, idealism, and a kind of non-ironic goodness that’s in far too short a supply both in modern comics and , crucially, modern life. It’s a celebration of all that we can be, and sometimes are — when we’re willing to be the heroes of our own adventures.

George Romero Finally Picks Out His Hero In “Empire Of The Dead : Act Two” #4

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Is it just me, or has the second act of George Romero’s Empire Of The Dead positively flown right by? I mean, here we are with only one issue left to go, and it feels like it was just the other day that the series started up again after the conclusion of the hiatus that followed its first arc. I have no doubt the book lost a fair amount of readers during the break — in fact, like most comics it probably lost a good half of its initial readership right after the first issue — but for those of us who’ve stuck with this thing, the payoff in the form of a big “fireworks” finale does seem to be approaching, albeit slowly. Remember, if all goes according to plan we’ve still got two more five-part acts to go following next month’s wrap-up of the current one, but there seems to be a steady flow to the story that’s been established here in the second chapter that wasn’t there in the first, with its sometimes-fitful starts and stops.

All that being said, though, it’s not like that better overall narrative hasn’t come at a price. George Romero’s Empire Of The Dead Act Two has been plagued with some seriously forced and unnatural dialogue at times — a flaw more apparent than ever in this fourth issue since Romero seems to have fallen back on dropping a whole lot of “—“s into his sentences in order to impart them with some cheap n’ easy pseudo-gravitas, and hey, I’m not ashamed to admit that I still miss Alex Maleev’s art, despite the continued improvement of Dalibor Talajic as he’s grown more comfortable and confident with horror-themed material (the addition of Rick Magyar on inks beginning with issue 3 also helped, as he’s given the imagery a darker, more subdued tone, a trend that I’m pleased to say continues this month).

The biggest qualm that many of us readers have, though, is that eight issues into this sprawling zombie saga, we still don’t know — or didn’t know, at any rate, since that seems about to change — who the hero of the story is supposed to be. There are various points of identification that the average reader can clearly see with a number of the characters, sure, but no clear-cut “good guy,” a la Ben in Night Of The Living Dead, has stepped forward.

And that’s where the often-neglected “zombie wrangler” Paul Barnum enters the picture here. There have been a number of issues where he’s been given precious little — if anything — to do, but now that the “love triangle” between himself, Dr. Penny Jones, and Mayor Chandrake seems to be evaporating — with no one in a position to “get the girl” (and that’s all that I’ll be saying about that due to the internet’s penchant for breeding self-appointed “spoiler police” around every digital corner) — our guy Paul seems to be out to bring the whole vampire cabal running post-zombie-apocalypse New York down. Mess with the girl he’s sweet on, and you’ve messed with him, I guess.

The only other significant story developments in this issue focus on the machinations to replace Chandrake with Chilly Dobbs now that nephew Billy is out of the way and the oncoming aerial-and-land assault being planned for the city by the militaristic forces using Dixie Peach and her southern hell-raisers as their ostensible (and quickly disposable, should the need arise) front. A common theme in both of these plot threads — which do, in fact, intersect in the pages of the comic itself and not just thematically — is that the devil we don’t know is often worse than the one we do, and that “leaders” of various movements — whether in the halls of government or out on the streets — are perfectly interchangeable pawns in the hands of the power brokers who really pull the strings, so that seems to be where Romero is aiming his always-present social commentary in his latest zombie epic.

All in all, then, shaky dialogue and an uncharacteristically impressionistic (and not, I might add, succesfully impressionistic) cover from the otherwise-reliable-to-this-point Alexander Lozano aside, issue four of Empire Of The Dead Act Two is an intriguing piece that Romero has moved into position on his grand chessboard. The focus of the story is tightening, events are coalescing with a kind of subtle yet undeniable force, and I think we’re headed for a bang-up conclusion to the second arc in 30 days or so.

“Crossed + One Hundred” #1 : Zombie Apocalypse, Alan Moore-Style

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Who are we kidding? Of course I was gonna pick this book up — despite having no previous experience with, or knowledge of, the Crossed “universe” — because, hey, it’s a new six-part Alan Moore series, and while there are very few creators who can “sell me” on a new title based on their involvement alone, Moore is (and frankly always will be) one of them. Still, for those (like myself) who need a brief history of the basic premise here before diving in, here goes —

Crossed is veteran comics writer Garth Ennis’ take on the zombie apocalypse. No one knows what caused it. The zombies are called “the crossed.” To date there have been several mini series set in this world, each featuring a different cast of characters. They’ve all been published by Avatar Press. That’s it.

A threadbare setup? Sure. But that has its advantages — namely, other creators can jump in and provide their own unique take on the proceedings, and to date, many have (most notably David Lapham and Simon Spurrier). Now it’s Moore’s turn, and what’s not to be over-the-moon thrilled about? Rich, detailed, amazingly-well-realized speculative worlds have always been his stock in trade, going all the way back to Halo Jones, and with Crossed + One Hundred he’s taking us, as the title would imply, a century into the future after the dead got up and started walking around. The cast of characters is entirely new for this series, and if you’ve never read any Crossed comics before this, you’ll do just fine. So get it! Now, let me tell you why —

In truth, the aforementioned Halo Jones is a pretty apt comparison for what’s apparently going on here as a whole, since our protagonist, one Future Taylor, is a young lady trying to make her way in a world that both she, and we, don’t fully understand — and, as with Halo, Moore has created an entirely unique, dense-but-eminently-decipherable dialect for his characters to speak in. It may take one read-through or so to fully get your head around the various terms used, all of which have evolved from where our language is at right now, but that’s part of the fun here. For those who struggled with the first chapter of Moore’s prose novel, Voice Of The Fire, rest assured, this is nothing like that, and really, you’re not going to have too much difficulty figuring out what folks are saying.

Okay, so, with all of that out of the way, then — how’s the story? And the art?

I’m pleased to report both are astonishingly good. Moore has given us a rag-tag group of survivors, living in a converted steam train, that are immediately fascinating and complex. Ms. Taylor, our entry point into this great unknown, is the band’s “archivist,” a sort of scavenger of lost knowledge and information, and most of the action in this initial chapter takes place in an abandoned library that our intrepid nomads come upon. Through Future’s (an interesting thing to note here is how all the youthful characters have optimistic names) journal entries and her interactions with others we come to see her, in no time flat, as a strong-willed, inquisitive, multi-faceted woman who hopefully has what it takes to survive, and possibly even thrive, in this hostile world. There’s a lot of talk about “strong female characters” in various media this days, and within the space of about six pages Future Taylor puts the likes of Katniss Everdeen (or however you spell that) to shame by being a living, breathing, realistic person who just happens to have been born in a time, and under a set of circumstances, that have caused human civilization to go down, to put it in the mildest possible terms, an unexpected path.

As for for the other inhabitants of this perhaps-dystopian-and-perhaps-not makeshift “society” — knowledge and learning are at a premium here, since everyone knows so little of how they came to be in the world got to be in its current state and there’s no centralized education system (or, for that matter, centralized anything) left. I get the feeling that Moore intends to use this situation as a spring-board for exploring some of his well-known anarchist ideals, but we’ll see — I hate to predict any sort of plot trajectory with any degree of certainty when it comes to The Bearded One because his capacity to completely surprise us is so firmly established.

One thing he also firmly establishes here, though, is an overwhelming sense of dread. I mean, dread so thick you can cut it with a knife. Future and her cohorts only have the briefest of encounters with The Crossed in this first issue, and survive these skirmishes with relative ease, but there’s nothing but unease hanging over them from page one to page 24. It definitely takes skill to wring that much tension out of nearly-thin air, and if there’s one thing Crossed + One Hundred excels at right out of the gate it’s in imbuing its readers with a sense of confidence that they’re in mightily capable creative hands. Moore knows exactly where he’s going with this story, it’s just us readers — and his characters — who are in the dark. That makes for some page-turning excitement no matter how much — or even how little — is going on.

The art for this series is being handled by Gabriel Andrade, who has worked on a handful of other projects for Avatar in recent years, and he does a really fine job here. His people look like — well, people — his monsters look suitably monstrous, and while there’s nothing particularly “flashy” about his style, his eye for detail is very welcome here as it takes more than words alone to bring a fully-fleshed-out alternate reality to life. Plus, he provided all eight of this first issue’s variant covers, so that speaks well of his ability to do a quality job even with the heaviest of workloads — I’m therefore reasonably optimistic that all six issues of this series will be coming out on time, and will manage to do so without looking half-assed or rushed.

Are you excited yet, friends? I sure hope so — and I know I am. The zombie apocalypse is certainly thoroughly -charted territory by now as far as genre premises go, but if anyone can breathe some new life into it and challenge, if not entirely overturn, our preconceived notions about what such a scenario would necessarily entail, it’s Moore and Andrade. These guys are bringing their “A game” and are flat-out eager to show us something new and entirely unexpected. This promises to be not just the Crossed story to beat all Crossed stories, but a seminal tale in the history of “zombie fiction” as a whole. The next four weeks can’t pass quickly enough, I’m completely hooked and counting down the days to the second issue.

“Shaft” #1 Brings Blaxploitation Bad-Ass To The Printed Page

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Right off the bat, I should probably apologize for the misleading headline here — Dynamite Entertainment’s Shaft #1 (the first of a six-part series) isn’t “bringing blaxploitation bad-ass to the printed page” so much as it’s bringing it back to the printed page, given that “the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks” actually started out life not on the silver screen, but in a series of pulp novels by the legendary Ernest Tidyman. And it’s probably down to the fact that Tidyman’s widow owns the copyright to the character of John Shaft that we even have this new spin-off comic at all, seeing as how negotiating a licensing rights deal with her is probably a lot easier than dealing with, say, MGM. Even so — am I the only one who’s surprised that this comic even exists?

I mean, when I think of licensed properties making the leap to the four-color world, I think Star Wars. Star Trek. Battlestar Galactica. Heck, this week Boom! Studios even released the first issue of a new Escape From New York ongoing monthly, and that didn’t exactly come out of left field in my estimation, but this? A comic based on a cult blaxploitation hero who “peaked” about 40 years ago in terms of his popularity? I gotta say, I didn’t see that one coming at all.

Still, I’m glad it’s here, and in the hands of writer David F.Walker and artist Bilquis Evely, Tidyman can rest easy in his grave — they seem to know what they’re doing every bit as much as Gordon Parks and Richard Roundtree did when they translated the urban adventures of “the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about” onto celluloid. Is this a good comic? Damn right.

Walker (who’s also penning a six-part Shaft prose story available by scanning QR codes included in the printed versions of each of the comics) has opted to go the “prequel” route here, taking us back to 1968 when a newly-returned-from -Vietnam John Shaft is trying to make a go of it an as Brooklyn-based amateur boxer. We learn a lot about our main character’s backstory here — certainly more than we ever did in the film — and I have to say that all the revelations we’re served ring very true indeed to the Shaft we’ve always known, while somehow being at least modestly surprising at the same time. The fact that Walker is able to convey all this info with a sparse and breezy prose style is an added plus, and while the main through-line of the plot is a pretty simple one — Shaft is ordered to throw a fight, what’s he gonna do about it? — that doesn’t mean the impact of our guy John’s decision, predictable as it may be, has any less of an impact on readers. He’s headed for big trouble, and I’m looking forward to it already. This first issue is pure table-setting, to be sure, but where’s the harm in that? Set the table nicely enough and I’ll want to stick around for the meal.

The art from Evely, whose prior work I confess to being unfamiliar with, can also be fairly categorized as “not flashy, but certainly effective.” It’s pretty simple and straightforward, but displays a kind of professionalism and eye for craft that were more common in the comics of 1971 — the year that Shaft hit theaters — than they are today. It suits the subject and time period quite well and invests the reader in the proceedings rather than alienating you with so much of the unskilled “flashier” art we find in, say, the average DC “New 52” comic. The panels in this book look good without sacrificing realism and plausibility along the way, and are more concerned with drawing you in than bowling you over. All in all, a job very well done.

As with pretty much all Dynamite first issues, Shaft #1 has hit the stands with about a bajillion different variant covers. I’ve included my four favorites with this review (by Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz, Francesco Francavilla, Michael Avon Oeming, and Ulises Farinas, respectively), and while they all portray a more Richard Roundtree-looking Shaft than Evely does in his interior pages (well, except for the one by Farinas, since that’s not Shaft at all, but the bad guy of the story), you really can’t argue with the awesome-ness of any of them. I opted for the Francavilla cover since I always opt for Francavilla covers, but I was sorely tempted by the main Cowan/Sienkiewicz one, as well. Any way you go, though, you can’t lose — either with what’s on the outside of the book or what’s in it. This is the John Shaft we’ve always known, but shown in a whole new light that I think almost all fans will appreciate.

“The Multiversity : Pax Americana” #1 Is The Comic Of The Year — No Question

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Understand — it’s not like me to make grandiose pronouncements like “such-and-such is the movie of the year,” “such-and-such is the comic of the year,” etc. It’s pretty damn hard to pinpoint something as being the best offering in any given medium when one person, obviously, can’t see or read everything that’s out there — and it’s probably doubly stupid to engage in such hyperbole before the year is even over.

And yet — that’s exactly what I’m doing right here, and with full confidence. That’s because the latest issue of Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity has no chance of being topped, barring a miracle of some sort. It’s just. That. Fucking. Good.

For those not familiar with the basic premise of what’s going on with The Multiversity, it’s an eight-issue mini-series from DC written by Morrison and illustrated by a bevy of the industry’s top talents — in this case, his frequent collaborator Frank Quitely, who absolutely outdoes himself here. Yeah, okay, all his stuff’s awesome to behold, but his work on Pax Americana leaves even his much-celebrated turns on Flex Mentallo, Batman And Robin, and All-Star Superman so far behind in the dust it’s not even funny. Just look at that spectacular page reproduced above and you’ll know that not only is Quitely rendering images here with amazing detail and care, he’s also pushing the boundaries of the comics page in terms of how narrative structure flows visually. I haven’t seen an artist on a “Big Two” project tell a story this hermetically sealed, with its own unique and perfectly logical, yet also expressive and evocative, language since Dave Gibbons created the singular look and feel of the Watchmen “universe” nearly 30 years ago.

And hey, it’s no coincidence that we bring up Watchmen here since Pax Americana has been referred to, more than once, as “Morrison’s Watchmen,” and for good reason. Each self-contained issue of The Multiveristy takes place on one of DC’s “parallel Earths,” with a slowly-unfolding, meta-fictional, ” comic within a comic” premise (nothing new for our guy Grant there, he’s been busting the fourth wall ever since his days on Animal Man) binding them all together in ways not fully understood yet given that we’re only halfway through the series, and this time out we’re on Earth-4, the Earth populated by the Charlton comics “Action Heroes” that DC acquired in the early ’80s and that Alan Moore famously first intended to utilize as his principal characters in he and Gibbons’ seminal work. Morrison famously hates Watchmen, and takes every available opportunity to say so, and so the “intrigue factor” here is pretty high in terms of comics fans wanting to see how he’d handle essentially the same characters.

I say “essentially the same” because, of course, Moore and Gibbons weren’t allowed to use the Charlton characters in the end, and so quick stand-ins were devised — The Question became Rorschach, Blue Beetle became Nite Owl, Nightshade became Silk Spectre, Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt became Ozymandias, Peacemaker became The Comedian, and Captain Atom became Dr. Manhattan. DC had “other plans” (most of which amounted to a hill of beans) for the “real” characters at the time, but in the “New 52” universe they’ve all been shelved indefinitely and so Morrison is free to use the original versions here — with the exception of Peter Cannon, whose copyright has reverted back to his creator, Pete Morisi.

The Watchmen similarities don’t end with the principal characters the story is based around, though — Pax Americana also employs a tight, dense story structure that plays around freely with timelines and often employs mirror images of the same scene told from multiple perspectives, such as in the astonishing two-page spread above. Rest assured, it all makes perfect sense, but odds are you won’t catch it all on the first reading unless you’re, I dunno, Stephen Hawking or something.

And that’s part of the joy of a book like this, isn’t it? Make no mistake — if you’re not willing to invest a few hours, at least, of your time (not to mention $4.99 of your hard-earned money) into what Morrison and Quitely (along with colorist supreme Nathan Fairbairn, who imbues the world of Earth-4 with a distinctive palette all its own) have created here, you’re short-changing yourself, because this is a story that reveals more and more about itself with each successive re-read. As you continue to peruse its contents you’ll be able to glean which instances are integral to a full understanding of the complex proceedings and which are just clever structural gimmicks employed by the author to impress you, but it wouldn’t be a good mystery story — and Pax Americana is, in fact, a great mystery story, centered around the most consequential murder any society can endure, that of its leader — without a few red herrings being thrown into the mix. Heck, Morrison even takes a fun, albeit admittedly cheap, shot at his arch-enemy, Mark Millar, by deftly deconstructing the most pivotal sequence of Wanted and essentially copying it note-for-note while turning it on its ear at the same time, and has a bit of fun at the expense of the scene with Sally and Laurie Jupiet/Juspeczyk in Watchmen #2, as well. Gratuitous? Sure, but it works.

The other ballsy move Morrison makes here is in asking the same fundamental question with his story that Moore and Gibbons did with Watchmen in terms of when is it right to sacrifice the few for the (supposed) good of the many, who “gets” to make that call, and how do they arrive at their decision? Granted, it’s a weighty theme that can’t be grappled with as comprehensively in one 40-page comic as it can in 12 separate 30-page comics, but I give him credit for essentially finding a way to tell multiple (hmmmm — a multiversity?) of stories here at once, given that there’s more going on in this one issue than most comics with a standard “A to Z” linear narrative manage to pack into a year’s worth of their pages, and by utilizing the same characters (again, essentially) that Watchmen used to deal with the same (again, essentially) themes and concepts, Morrison and Quitely aren’t so much aping Moore and Gibbons as they are answering them.

None of which is to say that Pax Americana is going to make people forget about Watchmen any time soon. Or even that it’s “as good” as Watchmen. Again, it’s much shorter, for one thing — but it’s certainly as intricate, arguably even moreso, certainly as demanding, and in the end, certainly as revelatory, at least for those with the patience to give it the detailed attention it both deserves and rewards (as an added plus, you needn’t even be invested in the other Multiversity comics to get on board with this one, it reads just fine on its own).

The comic of the year? Yeah, I can say that pretty easily — even though there’s a bunch of other stuff I haven’t read, and the year’s not over yet.