August 14, 2008
Rob Read: Batman City of Crime
I've been a fan of Dave Lapham going back to Stray Bullets, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite books. I make a point to pick up anything he does, and that led me to this book.
Taking the writing reins and, I think, layout duty, Lapham with artist Ramon Bachs delivers a great Batman story rooted in the best of film noir. The title of the story, City of Crime, evokes the classic film The Naked City, and the storytelling follows in that great film's footsteps as well, showing several stories from the underside of Gotham City and how they all tie into Batman's investigation of a missing pregnant teenager. The case brings in classic Batman villains The Penguin, Mr Freeze, and The Ventriloquist, as well as introducing the ominous new threat of The Body while keeping its focus on the citizens of Gotham and how they become affected, and in some cases infected, by the brutal nature of the city.
This is a dense story and it demands you give it your full attention. Lots of little details become full-blown story points as it unfolds and Bachs' lush art contains lots of buried treasures as well. I found this very rewarding as a complete story. My only real gripe is that no motivation for The Body was given that I was able to pick up on, other than the implication that the 'Head' for The Body was Gotham itself, which I found to be satisfying enough for me.
Posted by Schamberger at 09:08 AM
July 24, 2008
Rob Read: Criminal Volume 3 - The Dead and the Dying
Criminal is my perfect comic book. When I grow up this is the kind of book I want to make.
I love everything about this book, top to bottom. Ed Brubaker's writing is second to none when it comes to this sort of gripping noir. The atmosphere, the tight plotting, the characterization, the easily-quotable dialogue ("My pussy is a weapon"), all of it adds up to be the best kind of read: The one you can read over and over and get something new from it each time.
Then there's Sean Phillips, one of the very best artists working today in and out of the comic book field. No one does what he does better, and it's a true delight watching him doing it in Criminal. His deceptively easy-looking effort at creating the perfect atmosphere to bring Brubaker's stories to life gives the book a great kind of shelf life, in that it never makes it on the shelf and stays right on my desk so that I can ooo and aaaahh over the lush brushstrokes on a regular basis.
Posted by Schamberger at 07:16 PM
July 17, 2008
Rob Read: Jonah Hex - Origins and Only the Good Die Young
I've been enjoying the Jonah Hex series since it started with Luke Ross as the artist, but it really seemed to come into its own when it started rotating artists and most notably with the legendary Jordi Bernet starting in 'Origins'. Bernet wasn't very well-known in the States outside of the occasional Heavy Metal story or his well-regarded issue of 'Solo'.
Bernet rules. I just want to throw that out there. He's one of my artistic icons, and I sincerely hope that his work here will bring more of his resume to America.
There's also a nice two-parter illustrated by Phil Noto and a done-in-one by Val Semeiks. I've been a fan of Noto's since his early cover work and his brightly colored style brings an interesting twist to the normally muted palette of the Western genre. Sometimes his figures come off as a little too stiff, but nothing jarring. Semeiks' contribution is possibly the best work I've seen from him. No, I'll take that back. It IS the best work I've seen from him. I'd love to see more like this from Semeiks in the near future.
I really feel for artists who have to share a collection with Jordi Bernet. I mean, I really feel for them. I couldn't imagine having to have that weight on my shoulders, you know? I think that's where the art in this collection suffers. Bernet's two contributions are stellar to the point of being textbooks on how to successfully cartoon. But that slight stiffness Noto had in the prior edition exacerbates in this one to the point that at several times it pulled me out of the story. Not good.
Noto's use of color is still beautiful though, and that's where he always shines and what always gives his art that extra oomph it needs. It felt like there was a deadline crunch he was under on these as they weren't nearly as lush and beautiful as the contribution to 'Origins'. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this as his overall body of work tells me this was an exception.
David Michael Beck's one-parter though came out as a mess to me. It was over-saturated, over-referenced and all over the place in regards to storytelling. It's...pretty, I guess, but it's a mess at the same time. A little more work on contrast and storytelling would have made this a lot stronger, and it seemed disappointing to me that an artist of Beck's caliber couldn't quite bring that. It's nice to look at for the most part, but it's difficult to read.
And the stories? They're solid. Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray know what they're doing, and they bring consistently solid stories on every outing. Some are rather good, a couple are close to great, and one came out kind of bad, and I think that all comes from the artists they're working with rather than their scripts. Yup, the ones that are close to great are Bernet's, especially 'Who Lives and Who Dies', a story about a school teacher telling his class how he lost his arm in an encounter with Jonah Hex, and of course the multi-part 'Origins'. The one that was close to bad was the David Michael Beck one-parter that was just all over the place and wasn't helped at all by the sub-par storytelling from the art. These are writers that artists want to work with because they really know how to write to an artist's strengths. Even with my complaints about Beck's contribution, the writers definitely gave him those great moments where an artist can really shine. Beck is a very famous and award-winning cover artist and there are several of those killer panels where he can really hit his high notes, and he does in that story.
But man, these books are so worth it just for the Bernet art, folks. For reals.
Posted by Schamberger at 07:23 PM