Zombos' Closet

Vertigo's The Unexpected # 1

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good

The problem I have with Vertigo's The Unexpected anthology of 9 stories is its cover: the illustration has nothing to do with any of them.

I'm not sure if it's the high-heeled pumps, the knife in the head (at least I think it's a head), or the bloody mace provocatively poised, but how can you not write a story about this? The cheeky titillation, the schizophrenic weirdness, and the outright sleeziness is nowhere to be found inside. Bummer. You'd think a better approach would have been to use this illustration as a springboard, to see what stories might percolate from it.

Double bummer.

The Great Karlini by Dave Gibbons leads off The Unexpected's stories--that have nothing to do with such an inspiring cover--but Gibbons ends his story in a familiar way, making it one of the weakest stories included here. G. Willow Wilson and Robbi Rodriguez's Dogs, and Alex Grecian and Jill Thompson's Look Alive pick up the pace by merging their visual styles to the familiarity-skewing plots involving a lot of fed up man's best friends, and a feed-in-need zombie's creativity in finding her next meal ticket.

The Land by Josh Dysart and Farel Dalrymple is quietly compelling. It's tilt toward more narration, less dialog, and it's picture-book style of illustration create a mood that unfolds the story unemotionally, but it's undertone is meaningfully familiar about ancient monsters and prejudice.

I don't get the point of A Most Delicate Monster by Jeffrey Rotter and Lelio Bonaccorso, and Brian Wood and Emily Carroll's Americana left me bewildered. Neanderthals created from fossil DNA cause cultural consternation in Monster. A scientist takes a sizable brute to a water theme park to prove his point that Neanderthals and more recent humans shouldn't mix, but mixed results lead to a quick termination of the experiment. It's funny to a point, but whatever that point is, I can't say. Ditto with Americana, which also reads the most indie-prone of the bunch in story and art.

Family First from Matt Johnson and David Lapham provides an unexpected twist ending and sufficient gore that comes closest to the cover's potential. A brother and sister do indeed put their family first when an apocalypse presents those annoying live or die hunter and gatherer challenges we're all familiar with. They also keep the BBQ smokin' hot for guests. I don't quite know why, but I felt this story could have gruesome-twosome series potential.

The last story, Blink...Le Prelude a La Mort is more confusing than entertaining. This prelude from Selwyn Hinds and Denys Cowan brings us into the middle of an ongoing story continued in Voodoo Child No. 1. Promotional gimmicks like this waste precious space in comics; space I'd rather see filled with stories pertinent to the issue at hand.

A courtesy copy for this review was provided by DC Comics.

The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold # 12 Trick or Treat

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good (for young readers)

Everything has rules, Batman. Even Halloween. -- Zatanna

In Trick or Treat, Batman and Zatanna investigate a break-in at the House of Mystery on Halloween night. With only a few rolls of toilet tissue left behind, and Abel turned into deadwood, they don't have much to go on. Cain isn't much help, either, since the house's comings and goings make it impossible to determine if anything is missing. 

In this tale for the younger reader, the mystery is who would dare treat Cain and Abel this way, and what nefarious purpose is behind it? Sholly Fisch and Ethen Beavers keep the colorful action simple and fast-moving toward the solution as Zatanna resorts to magic and Batman resorts to more practical methods of investigation, with both approaches necessary.

After a couple of dead ends involving Dr. Destiny putting the moves on Zatanna, and Mr. Mxyzptlk tying the strings on both of them, the investigation forces a resolution involving a lot of good and bad supers squaring off to reveal the true villain. 

My only regret is the cover price: I wish it were a lot cheaper. I'd have loved to give this to the many trick or treaters coming to my own house of mystery on Halloween. Now, if only I could get Zatanna to show up, too.

In The Dark Justice League Dark # 1

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good
(story good, but artwork lacking)

Since Zatanna is wearing pants they put her fishnet stockings on her arms, overly done coloration brightens to distraction, and another apocalyptic vision gets everyone in a huff. And don't get me started on using Justice League in the title: it's somewhat confusing, but since Superman, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg aren't up to the task at hand, I suppose it will have to do for now.

Even John Constantine winds up here as Madame Xanadu sees a bleak future and calls Shade (actually she calls his M-Vest). Enchantress is dreaming madness and chaotic spells ensue. This first issue sets up the looming hunka-burnin' catastrophe with mini-ones, and introduces key participants including Deadman, Constantine, Zatanna, Shade, and a mysteriously confused young girl.

Getting in their way is the artwork, with color that saturates the opening action in a golden haze, and the closing setup in purple. Mikel Janin draws everyone with almost the same face, and poses characters stiffly in his scenes. One welcome exception is Constantine dropping in unexpectedly. Another is the encounter with filthy flying teeth (now try and say that 3 times fast), which is rendered less effective by a putting-green background.

Peter Milligan's story builds well to the quiet climax, adding mystery and pending threat, but Janin's layout, while grid-wise assists the narrative, content-wise needs more oomph and fluidity to bring on the darkness.

And for gosh sakes, dull those colors!

Tainted Love I, Vampire # 1

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

I wouldn't have picked this one up if DC hadn't sent it to me for review. I have a problem with the cover. It sucks. Okay. I know. You want more of a critical assessment than a fanboy kind of knee-jerk opinion. Here it is then: it sucks a lot. It's too yapping Twilight-y, and its composition panders more to stereotypical male herdy-nerdy readers with its voluptuous, booby and elf-y coy female posturing brazenly. I don't know what age range they thought they were aiming for with this one, but I'm not near it apparently. And it doesn't jive with the more sophisticated content, which I can tell you doesn't suck. 

Andrea Sorrentino's heavily dark boundaries and shadow-fused illustration would easily be at home in a black and white world, but Marcelo Maiolo's color dashes and toning brings emotional depth as well as objective and personal perspective through its variation across the pages.

This first issue re-establishes the centuries-old love-hate relationship between Mary and Andrew: she's intent on feasting and he's more of the fasting kind. Joshua Hale Fialkov interweaves their lovers' dialog between present and past, and in spite of his 400 years of vampire-killing savvy, she gets in the last word. Much bloody mayhem ensues

If Fialkov and Sorrentino can sustain the emotional intensity and visual flare started in this first issue, the series should have a long run. Their predominant use of wide-format panels gives ample room for telling the story with imagery and narrative, and red dialog boxes and discrete splashes of blood punctuate the lovers' quarrel, broadening it to apocalyptic proportions.

At 20 pages an issue, it's a tough call whether I want to wait for the trade paper or pick up each issue. I'm tempted toward the latter based on the promise shown here.

Is it me or is everything so apolcalyptic these days?

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E # 1

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good

Grate Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D onto Hellboy, add a little Universal Monster's seasoning, and bake until Metal Men done. Presto, you've got a dish of Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. Don't forget to garnish with a little Tokyo Pop wildness. 

The Frankenstein Monster is the top agent for the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive group. The Ant Farm is the 3 inch-sized globe the group travels the, er, globe with, at over 600 miles per hour. Frankenstein thinks the whole miniaturization process to get into the Ant Farm is rather goofy, and that's something Jeff Lemire needs to write around: the goofy factor. Metal Men goofy was good; Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E goofy may or may not be so good, but it's hard to judge it all on the first issue.

Keeping up with Lemire's imagination is Alberto Ponticelli's detailed artwork, whose splash pages and large panels are exciting and well executed where they need to be. One large panel introduces Frankenstein's new team--although he prefers to work alone--the Creature Commandos: the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black--no, wait a minute, I'm getting it all mixed up.

The actual Creature Commandos are: Dr. Nina Mazursky, amphibian human hybrid; Warren Griffith, Werewolf; Vincent Velcoro, Vampire; and Khalis, Mummy and medic. Father introduces them to Frankenstein when a town is overrun by hungry monsters that keep on coming, no matter how many are killed. Father is the mad scientist running S.H.A.D.E. He can regenerate himself into various human forms to keep on ticking. This time around he chose the form of a Japanese schoolgirl wearing a mask around her eyes. One of Lemire's naughty fantasies perhaps? Like I said, goofy. 

This first issue is perhaps a little too ambitious: there's a lot of matter of fact oddness to accept at face value, hopefully to be fleshed out later. Lemire manages to keep his story moving forward cleanly, however, and Ponticelli's pencils alone are a treat. The tone here reminds me of the storylines you'd find in DC comics from the 1970s, and Frankenstein's manner and dress make me think of the Robert De Niro Frankenstein character.

Although purists will have to deal with the Monster being named Frankenstein, this first issue is filled with enough wild, and promising, story and art to warrant your attention.

Animal Man # 1: The Hunt Part 1 Warning From the Red

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good

I'm new to Animal Man and probably wouldn't have picked up any of the issues except for DC sending me a review copy for their The New 52! reboot.  I like it. I like Jeff Lemire's story more than Travel Foreman's pencils, but there's enough like to share with both.

The use of a full-text opening page is pretty daring, but it sets the tone for the story and it's lively--written as a quick, but revealing, interview with A-Man conducted by The Believer magazine. Lemire sets up the next few pages in Buddy Baker's kitchen with his family. His wife's grumpy, his daughter Maxine wants a doggie, and A-Man--or is it just Buddy B, average guy now?--isn't sure which foot or paw to put forward until his son Cliff mentions the hostage situation at the hospital. At least it gets him out of the house.

Foreman's wispy thin lines are not a deal maker or breaker for me, they're just a little too feminine when more masculine is needed. Dare I say dainty? For chrissakes this is Animal Man where talking about. Brutish, feral, big gonad animus daddy doesn't spring to my mind through Foreman's art. He seems to have a little trouble with certain head angles, but overall the emotion in each panel does come through. Then again, the nightmare sequence, colored in greys, blacks, and reds, shrieks horror! with its primal energy. So I'll sum it by saying Foreman's style is not my cup of pencils, but it still works well to enhance the story, even if I'm thinking a Neal Adams' ruggedness-styled A-Mannish approach more appropriate. 

Lemire doesn't waste any of his 20 pages and his writing style melds with Foreman's lighter touch to produce a solid read for the first issue. The interaction between Buddy's family is earnest, real, and the doubts and concerns and needs of everyone, including Buddy, makes the storyline naturally peak to the last panel, which comes as a morbid surprise adding to a growing mystery I'd want to know more about in issue 2.

Swamp Thing # 1: Raise Dem Bones

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Frankly, I consider DC's The New 52! reboot a brilliant, but cheesy, marketing gimmick to boost sales. It will certainly do that, but I doubted much good would come out of freshening up the staple titles that make or break the House of DC every month, so I hadn't planned on picking up any of the number one issues; until I received a review copy of Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette's Swamp Thing in the mail. Did it hit its mark? Sure did. Will I want to continue reading it? Sure will. I think you will want to, too.

Scott Snyder writes his stories by cutting between locations, situations, and people to build his plot's events. He's been damn lucky to have artists who seem to relish all that jumping around and keep up with him, but also add to his narrative in ways--framing, angles, positions of characters--he probably didn't even think of. Snyder's a very cinematically-minded writer in how he makes his stories build, and they have a completeness between issues, with clean, integral dialog, and visually important actions capping neatly at the given page length.

You get that sense of completeness reading this first Swamp Thing issue, Raise Dem Bones. We see birds dying in Metropolis, then bats dying in Gotham, then fish dying in the ocean in the space of 3 pages, switch to a disillusioned Dr. Holland doing a construction gig in Louisiana, and then visit an archeological dig in Arizona. It's the mastodon bones in the dig in Arizona that kick things into horror gear, and the 3 men who return to the dig at night get their necks all bent out of shape with what they find. Paquette doesn't really panel his art, it just wraps around and across the pages, word ballons and narrative blocks  like a rich vine. Snyder's dialog exchange between Dr. Holland and Superman, and the narrative embellishment to scenes are just enough, just right, and meld with the artwork. Or does the artwork meld with it?

Either way, this series is off to a very good start.

Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing 1

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

John Constantine smokes up a storm in the first of 3 issues for The Search for Swamp Thing. With only 20 pages to involve Batman and Zatanna, Jonathan Vankin and Marco Castiello keep Constantine moving before he can suffer from jet lag.

After the Swamp Thing sends a vibe to Constantine by way of the bloke's morning paper (try doing that on an iPad), it's a quick hop and half a pack to the Royal Botanic Gardens to commune more closely with "old lettuce-breath." The greenery takes Constantine's breath away instead, and leaves him with a spreading fungus tatoo for old time sake.

Lazy sot that he is, Constantine hooks up with Batman to do his legwork while a mobster impaled on a tree limb in a Gotham City junkyard may hold more clues as to what's making Daddy Iceburg Lettuce so petulant. In a tender moment of holding hands and frolicking in The Green's etherealness to commune with Swampy, Constantine winds up a few butts short and with a headache only Zatanna can make worse, what with their romance magic all zapped out and all, even with all that cleavage a-burgeoning (it's discretely shirted up for the issue's cover).

The art and story make Constantine a walking chimney of twitty droll wit armed with handy pocket magic spells, and keep this glummy mystery moving along briskly to the capper splash page lead-in for issue 2.

I just hope he can solve it before he finds out how much cigarettes cost here in the States and the page count drops again.

American Vampire Volume 1Snyder, King, and Albuquerque Sizzle

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Here's what vampires shouldn't be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and only work at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes.

What should they be?

Killers, honey...(from the introduction by Stephen King)

There are bloodthirsty killers and blood-drained dead aplenty in the hardcover edition of American Vampire from Vertigo. It collects the first 5 issues of vibrantly colored panel-stretching art from Rafael Albuquerque and colorist Dave McCaig, detailing the two side by side stories that tell the death and times of the American-made vampire, Skinner Sweet. Cover art, sample script pages, and a foreward by King and afterword by Snyder are also included.

I was surprised to see how concise Scott Snyder and Stephen King's script pages are. Comprised mostly of dialog, they leave ample room for Alburquerque's interpretive embellishments with visual characterization to imbue emotional energy into each panel.  Snyder's story begins in 1925 Los Angeles where Pearl and Hattie, two yearning-for-stardom actors in Hollywood, become intimately acquainted with the blood-thirsty--thirstier than usual, anyway--movie moguls running the studio. Stephen King's story begins in the 1800s to tell how Sweet's taste for sweet candy turns to the sour-sweet taste for warm blood.

King's writing stands out for its cussing, brutal killings as Sweet takes revenge on lawman Jim Book, and for narrator Will Bunting, a newsman who was there at the time. Bunting wrote a dime novel about it called Bad Blood. We meet him when he's promoting the reprinting of his book at the Sagebrush Bookstore. Three people are in attendance--two are awake--as he recounts the truth behind his "fictional" tale.

Old World European vampires running the rails, tired of Sweet's train robberies, run afoul of Sweet's ill-temperament and newly- acquired abilities, which include walking in sunlight, long razor sharp claws with the strength to wield them,  and an expanding jaw with pointy fangs. Compared to the Euro-vamps, Sweet is a wolf to their sheep.

And he knows it.

Between the Wild West and the Roaring Twenties, Sweet does turn sweeter. Or so it seems. He helps Pearl deal with the Old World European vampires running the studio and then mosy's on his way. Hints to his main weakness and unfinished business he's hankering to tidy up are left with us to roll our own on until we meet up with him again along Snyder and King's revitalizing vampire series trail.

I've got dibs on Brad Pitt playing Sweet in the big screen version.

 A courtesy copy of American Vampire: Volume 1 was received for this review.

Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Desolation. Uncivilized behavior. Freaky mutations. Must be the post-apocalypse in Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth comic series, with the first five issues, Out of the Deep Woods, collected into Vertigo's trade paperback. 

There's more: Gus, who sticks out like a sore thumb with his deer-like antlers and ears; a mysterious stranger, called Jepperd, who rescues Gus from hunters looking for reverse-anthropomorphic mutated kids like Gus; and the "affliction," or plague, or major nasty event that's reduced the human population to a few nasty adult survivors with basic ulterior motives like staying alive at all costs and against all odds.

Raised by his Bible-reading father, Gus must leave the safety found in the woods he's known all his life. As he travels to a sanctuary with Jepperd, a two-fisted, tough as oak and emotionally as thick-skinned man with a bagful of candy and a secret, Gus learns more about the world outside and eventually meets other mutated kids showing different animal characteristics.

There's still more: Gus is nine years old. The affliction started seven years ago. So how can he be affected by mutation before the world was sent to places deep south by the contagion? It's a puzzle that Lemire assembles his minimalist but expressive panels around, showing closeups of Gus and the desperate people he meets reacting to each other and the near overwhelming loss surrounding them--and within them. Gus' innocence and naivete, the adults' complicity and duplicity, and the inevitable conflict between the two are dramatically visualized by Lemire with carefully paced and sequenced scenes and sparse narrative and dialog.

I almost passed this one up. I thought the antler-kid story too cute and indie-artsy based on the first issue's cover. I was wrong. It's about self-discovery, overcoming one's fear, and struggling through desperation. It will keep you reading to discover, along with Gus, what the Hell happened, why, and where more candy bars might be found.

I, Zombie 1: Dead to the World

Combine the two most horrible tastes you can imagine--like motor oil and someone else's vomit--and you won't even come close to this level of nasty. Yeah, I eat brains. (Gwen in I, Zombie, Issue 1)

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good

I, Zombie from Vertigo is an urban fantasy set in Eugene, Oregon, a town very much like Archie Comics' Riverdale. Instead of Jughead, Betty, and Veronica, however, the grave-digging Gwendolyn Dylan has friends like  Ellie, a Go-Go Dancer ghost with a beehive hairdo, and Scott, a were-terrier boyfriend with puppy-love eyes. The gang likes to hang out at Dixie's Firehouse, the local malt shop and diner.

When not at Dixie's, Gwen digs graves at the Green Pastures Cemetery, which boasts their naturally wholesome methods of interment. Gwen's dirt-shoveling skills come in handy because she's a 20-something zombie who needs to chow down on a mass of gray cells every month to keep from turning into a less attractive and stinkier one. The catch is that when she eats a recently interred person's brain, she experiences the memories, pleasure, anguish, and desires the person left behind before shuffling off to points unknown. This time around, that shuffling off involves murder.

There's a lot of kitschy-cute weirdness crammed into this first issue: a mysterious corporation concerned about the surge in permanent residents at Green Pastures Cemetery; a former boyfriend Gwen anxiously avoids; the question of who murdered her latest dinner guest and why; and paintball vampires prowling around. Introductions are fast and brief in this ambitious issue, leaving me with anticipation for the next issue and hoping it doesn't fall flat under its own weighty cuteness. Michael Allred's artwork melds with the odd characters and their peculiar talents well enough to keep the tone balanced for the light and dark drama-kitsch writer Chris Roberson is aiming for.

DC Comics sent me a courtesy copy for this review.

The Chill: Vertigo Crime Goes Supernatural

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

I worry a lot when reviewing a graphic novel. So many things to consider; you've got the artwork, you've got the writing, you've got everything between the art and the writing--and it all works up to either a good or a bad story. It's an encompassing beam bar balancing act and one little slip can send everything screwy. Then there's the personal bias; every critic has one, whether we admit it or not. Usually we leave it up to the reader to pick it out, like a fly in a bowl of chowder; it's there, but the devil to find it.

Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi manage to balance The Chill without going screwy. Starr's got a nasty habit of using too many get-the-bar-of-soap-ready cuss words in his characters' dialog, but I admit I'm peevish with writers using fuck you this and fookin' that--with variations. It gets in the way of writing really good dialog when you're forced to dance around the expletives you'd naturally rope a dope with. But let me make this easy for you: there's my fly in the chowder.

Starr's story is gritty, sexy, and sopping with imaginative Druid magic references. Bertilorenzi's artwork makes it come alive. His panels barely contain it all and spill across the pages, keeping up the momentum of Starr's mystery that begins in County Clare, Ireland a ways back, and continues over the years, getting worse as she goes.

A lover escapes death and the lovee has something awaken inside her. It's called the chill. Not really good for her or her lovers, but her dad benefits most from it. As to why that is, you won't hear it from me; you need to read the story. But I can tell you Bertilorenzi's visual interpretation of Starr's terror--all the bad killings, the cuss-mouthed but obtuse detectives, the gritty city, and the nasty messing the sheets sex is rendered in black and white and shades of gray. He's got a good Mickey Spillane trashiness going with Starr's innocent and blemished people meeting their doom.

The only glamour in this story comes from Irish magic. Most everyone starts off looking good, but Starr must have some flies in his chowder, too, because even professors and priests wind up researching and preying more than they morally or legally should.

Review copy provided by DC Comics/Vertigo.

Simon Dark's Gotham City No Walk in the Park

Lurks in Shadows. Hides in the park.
Simon. Simon. Simon Dark.
If you're good he'll stay away.
If you're bad he'll make you pay.
Lurks in Shadows. Hides in the park.
Simon. Simon. Simon Dark.

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Simon Dark's first two graphic novels, What Simon Does (collecting issues 1 through 6) and Ashes (collecting issues 7 through 12), must be read together. The first sets up Simon's bizarre background and the second delivers the main storyline of Lovecraftian-styled witchcraft, which depends on that set up. Mixing fairly equal parts of mystery, occult science, and recognizable horror elements such as the Gothic, a creepy-looking sack-like mask, and conniving robed worshipers of demonic beings, Steve Niles builds an effectively darker Gotham City than even Batman deals with. This atmosphere is further enhanced through Niles' characters, those both good and evil, who either aid or hinder Simon Dark in his continuing battle with the dark side, and in his search to understand his ultimate purpose for being.

These characters are arrestingly drawn by Scott Hampton, who makes Simon's world properly Gothic, but perhaps a little too dark at times. His carefully stylized, foreground-heavy, panels flow across pages like single frames in a movie, creating images that are  static and posed, and lacking an internal dynamism. He reminds me of Al Williamson, although not as detailed when drawing background imagery. Hampton's unique faces are like portraits and they play an important role in his composition by generating emotional depth with their sober expressions; at first, this near photo-realistic approach is elegantly novel, but it can lead to confusion between the two heroines; a pathologist, Beth Granger, and Simon's soulmate, Rachel Dodds, when their features blur into similarity as dire events involving them unfold . Rereading clears up this confusion (along with clothing cues I missed initially), but more detail and less black in the scenes would have mitigated this.