Some reviews from the first four months of the year … part ten!

Yes, we’re into double digits, people. Can you handle it?!?!?!?

Public Domain volume 2: Build Something New (February) by Chip Zdarsky (writer/artist/colorist/letterer), Rachel Stott (art assistant), and Allison O’Toole (editor). $16.99, 113 pgs, Image.

As I’ve mentioned before, I like Zdarsky as a writer when he’s not trying so hard to, I don’t know, show off, I guess, with what he thinks is a super-cool idea and instead just focuses on writing interesting characters, and Public Domain is full of interesting characters. There’s not really too much to say about this particular volume of Public Domain – with both co-creators doing their own versions of the Domain, and each having problems with it, and each trying to get it out on the market before the other. Zdarsky obviously knows a lot about the comics industry, so while a lot of this is inside baseball, it feels real, and he has some fun parodying some of the aspects of comic book publications (the snotty pretentious British writer is very funny), and he introduces some good drama, too, so we just roll right along, don’t we? Zdarsky is doing a good job exploring the generation gap, as both Syd and Jerry are older and a bit out of touch, but he also points out that sometimes new isn’t necessarily better, and editors and marketers should trust the talent sometimes (gosh, I wonder why Zdarsky takes that stance?). I don’t know – it’s just a good comic book with solid art. Zdarsky wasn’t sure if he would continue after the initial arc, but it does seem like he’s ready to go with another one, so that’s keen. Zdarsky can chop off Batman’s hand all he wants if it means he gets to do this book in his spare time!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Redcoat volume 1 (March) by Geoff Johns (writer), Bryan Hitch (penciler/inker), Andrew Currie (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer), and Brian Cunningham (editor). $14.99, 178 pgs, Image.

Continuing with the, frankly, disturbing trend of Am I A Geoff Johns Fan Now?, we have the latest Ghost Machine title, in which a British soldier fighting against the rebels in 1776 becomes immortal and has adventures. It’s fun as heck, and I’m forced to conclude that I might be a Geoff Johns fan, and how can I live with myself? Simon Pure (yeah, not a great name there) is a cowardly soldier who runs from George Washington’s troops at Trenton (a Washington, it ought to be noted, who’s an adept magic user, distinguishing this from “our” world) and stumbles into a ritual in which strange hooded figures are trying to make Benjamin Franklin immortal, but Simon gets in the way. That’s just the prologue, of course, as the bulk of the story takes place in 1892, after Simon has spent over a century being a dissolute reprobate. He gets tangled up with the same group that made him immortal, but he’s injured by something that will take away his immortality, so he teams up with … Benedict Arnold, who’s also still alive and as much of a jerk as you might expect. Meanwhile, there’s a young kid who figured out what was going on with Simon and came all the from Germany to check him out … a kid named Albert Einstein. Yep. It’s a rousing adventure, as Simon learns more about his condition, and Einstein helps him become a better person, which is nice for him. There’s a lot of twists and turns, and Johns keeps everything zipping along (until the final issue, which is a long epilogue and is kind of neat). Bryan Hitch kills it, as he seems re-invigorated a bit by not working for Marvel or DC, and his details are excellent and he does some beautiful double-page spreads and it’s just really nice to look at. If you’re not a Hitch fan, this isn’t going to sway you in any way, but if you’re an old-school Hitch fan and are a bit disappointed with some of his recent sloppy work, this is a nice return to form. I’m pretty sure that the next arc takes place … earlier than this one?, and that would be neat to see – Johns doesn’t necessarily need to move forward from this point if he doesn’t want to – and I will get the next volume, because this is a fun action-adventure. What kind of world do we live in where I’m enjoying the heck out of Geoff Johns comics? I’d say the world has gone mad, but we already know that!!!!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

The Retirement Party (February) by Teddy Goldenberg (writer/artist). $15.00, 65 pgs, Floating World Comics.

Last time, back in Part 9 of this epic series, I mentioned that someone called Paranoid Gardens “surreal” even though it wasn’t, and The Pedestrian was more surreal than that but still isn’t all that surreal. “Surreal” is a tough adjective to use, because too many people use it instead of “weird,” but that’s not necessarily what it means. It means more “irrational” or “dream-like,” which can certainly be weird but is a more specific kind of weird. Paranoid Gardens, for instance, is weird, but it’s not irrational or dream-like in the universe that Way and Simon set up. The Pedestrian is a bit more unusual, but again, not that irrational within the framework of the story. Which brings us to The Retirement Party, which is actually surreal. Surreal art, especially when it’s presented as a narrative, is difficult to discuss, because it’s supposed to defy explanation, as it is, you know, irrational and dream-like. I don’t remember my dreams too often, but two I do recall:

• I was at a Hall and Oates concert and I was looking for my parking space, and the levels of the parking garage were not simply listed by floor, but long, weird combinations of letters and numbers, and I couldn’t remember where I parked. Of course, as I was dreaming, I was convinced I had taken public transportation to the concert, so why would I have parked?
• I dreamt I was driving some friends around because they were running errands, even though I had something I had to do at a certain time and I wasn’t convinced I would make it if I drove my friends around. At some point, we ended up in an apartment building on one of the upper floors, and the entire floor had been converted into a giant apartment, and there was a party going on. My friends disappeared, and 1970s Michael Caine came over and was chatting with me. I knew I had to leave to get to my appointment, but it’s 1970s Michael Caine – are you going to leave? I finally got away, but as I was walking down the stairs (why not the elevator?), Michael Caine and his cronies started chasing me, and I realized I was, basically, Rosemary Woodhouse (but without the baby), and they were a devil cult. Then I woke up.

Do either of these dreams make sense? Of course not! You can try to dissect some elements of it based on what was going on in my life at the time (I don’t remember what was going on in my life at the time, but dreams often reveal some of your thoughts about what’s going on in your lives), but the narrative of the dreams don’t make any sense. If a painting is surreal, you can break down the elements in it, certainly, but in a narrative structure, it’s a bit more difficult. Such is the case of The Retirement Party, in which Fred is leaving the company and various people share or think about their experiences that they’ve had recently. The stories are just odd, with not much resolution, and they don’t have plots so much as just things happening to highlight alienation and loneliness, which is what these people experience. Chic talks about visiting a job site (it seems like these dudes are architects) and the fact that one of the clients didn’t recognize him; Lisa talks about her unusual romance with the owner of a flower shop; Fanny visits a city that looks like where she lives but is different, and when she returns, everyone covers their eyes when they look at her. Why do they do this? Who the hell knows – it doesn’t matter! The stories are unsettling and off-kilter, but Goldenberg makes them a bit sad, as these people are lost in a world they no longer recognize, and despite the bizarre nature of the stories, we still get the sense of the severing of people from each other and the emptiness of modern life. Fanny, at least, gets a kind of happy ending, but it’s just a strange, slightly creepy, mournful story, and while Goldenberg’s art is a bit crude and stiff, it also fits the weirdness of the writing. When Lisa goes dancing with Henry, Goldenberg gives us five silent pages of Henry doing his moves, and it is, honestly, one of the more disturbing scenes in comics that you’ve seen in a long time, even though it’s just a dude dancing. Given what Lisa is thinking and some of the other stuff surrounding it, it’s just really eerie.

It’s hard, as I noted, to really write about this, as you can’t talk about the story resolving in any way. It does hit you in a way that you just absorb, because the idea of surreal art is to just make you feel differently than you usually do. This certainly does, so it feels successful to me!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Reversal (March) by Alex de Campi (writer), Skylar Patridge (artist), Kelly Fitzpatrick (colorist), and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer). $24.99, 275 pgs, Dark Horse.

This is an interesting fantasy-esque comic, in which magic has been present in the world for a year and people still haven’t come to terms with it. Robin Grant is a doctor working on the problem with other scientists, but the government is putting pressure on them and the military wants to use force to stop the magical stuff. Robin’s husband disappeared in the forest where the magic comes from, so she’s motivated to figure out what’s going on. Meanwhile, her daughter, Tré, finds a magic sword that, when she unsheathes it, turns her into a tall, handsome warrior (well, not really – it’s more that she blends with the warrior, as he can hear her inside him, and she can hear him when her body returns). Niko, the warrior, is white, while Tré is black, and de Campi does a little bit with that. Niko figures out that he might be to blame for magic being in the world, and he and Robin and her sons – Anthony and Omar – head into the forest to see if they can reverse it. They have to race against the clock a bit, because the military is throwing its weight around and things get dire quickly, so that’s a problem. Anthony, meanwhile, makes a wish on a magical object and turns into … a human-sized bird. His mother is not pleased by this. It’s a pretty good story, but de Campi is, it feels, more interested in exploring the social aspects of magic than leaning into the plot, which isn’t a bad thing. As I noted, Robin is a black woman, Tré is black, but Niko is white, and he seems a fairly stereotypical “fantasy hero” but it turns out he’s really not. Meanwhile, Anthony becoming a bird is very much a transgender metaphor, and de Campi does some nice work with that, too. She doesn’t want to just do a standard fantasy story, so she comes up with pretty good solutions to the major problems, which is how to stop the military from killing everyone but also making sure magic doesn’t overrun the world. It’s a nice, entertaining story – it’s not the deepest thing in the world, but de Campi creates neat characters and, unlike so many writers, she doesn’t drag the subtext up to the text all that much – Anthony is obviously a metaphor, but nobody says it, so it’s better than a lot of stories these days. Patridge does a decent job with the art – she designs a pretty cool dragon early on in the book, and she does very good work with the body language of the bird-like Anthony, because he can’t speak and his face doesn’t change that much. Patridge does a decent job contrasting the mundane world with the odd magical world that Niko comes from. Her action scenes are a bit stiff, but they’re choreographed well, which is nice.

This is a pretty neat comic. It’s not as good as some things de Campi has written, but it’s an interesting idea that she does some good things with. That’s not a bad thing!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Rifters (April) by Brian Posehn (writer), Joe Trohman (writer), Chris Johnson (artist), Mark Englert (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer), and Kel Symons (editor). $16.99, 147 pgs, Image.

I thought this would be a goofy time-travel story, and it is, but it’s a bit too goofy and childish, so I’m a bit disappointed in it. Time travel is fairly easy in this comic, and the “rifters” – Regulators of Infinite and Finite Time – are in charge of stopping “time crime.” Gellar and Fenton are the stars of the comic, and Gellar believes that there’s a time-jumping serial killer out there, although his boss doesn’t believe him, of course. There’s a political element, too, and Gellar – who’s a big conspiracy theorist – and Fenton have to, well, unravel a big conspiracy. It’s not a bad story, and as a comedic vehicle, it has potential, but Posehn and Trohman don’t care too much about doing the work. I’ve often mentioned that far too many comics seem like they came about because drunk dudes at 2 a.m. had “great” ideas and nobody told them they weren’t great, and this feels like that. There don’t seem to be any rules to time travel, so why would there be any consistency in how people alter history, and why are there cops to stop them? Gellar and Fenton are supposed to be terrible cops, sure, but it’s not very clear what any of the cops are supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, the writers are really happy to simply throw as much toilet humor into the book as they can, and it’s just kind of dull. Yes, we get it – the cops have weapons that make everyone in the area poop their pants, which, ha ha. There are moments of humor, and humor is subjective, and it’s just not that funny. That’s all I can really say – there doesn’t seem like there’s much cleverness here, and that just makes it a bit frustrating to read because you can kind of see a nifty story here, but Posehn and Trohman just decide to go as low-brow as they can, and it’s just not funny. But maybe you’d think it is.

Johnson does nice work with the art, though. He has a bit of a Ryan Browne vibe to his art, and his solid line and attention to detail do help give the book a bit of a “realistic” look, which works for the wackiness of the actual story. He has fun with some of the historical figures and the odder things, like the civilized dinosaurs, and he does nice work with the violence in the book. As annoying as the story is, the art is quite nice to check out.

This book bums me out. I wanted it to be a slightly silly time-travel story, and I’ve liked a lot of what Posehn has written in the past, but the writers just go far into the lowest common denominator of humor, and I just don’t dig it. Again, you might. I just don’t.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Rook: Exodus volume 1 (April) by Geoff Johns (writer), Jason Fabok (artist), Brad Anderson (colorist), and Rob Leigh (letterer). $14.99, 159 pgs, Image.

Continuing with the, frankly, disturbing trend of Am I A Geoff Johns Fan Now? (wait, did I use that already?), we have Rook, which, so far, is my least-favorite of the “Ghost Machine” titles, although it’s certainly not bad. It just feels a bit less interesting than the others. Above, with Redcoat, we have an immortal ex-British soldier who’s a bit of a coward, and that’s kind of neat character, plus you have the potential for a lot of fun different kinds of stories. The others – Geiger and Junkyard Joe – also seem to have more potential. in this comic, we get Rook, who’s a “warden” on a terra-formed planet (called Exodus) that was created as a new Eden, but when the terra-forming engine failed, the populace on the planet abandoned it, leaving the poor people and the wardens behind to deal with the giant fauna that exists on the planet. Rook is trying to build his own rocket to get off-planet, but that goes by the boards fairly soon, and he gets caught up in a war for control of Exodus, which might not be as dying as he thinks. It’s not bad, and Johns does a decent enough job telling the tale, but it just doesn’t feel as interesting as the other ones. Rook has a difficult relationship with his father, as we see in flashbacks, although he doesn’t wear a bomber jacket, so I guess that’s good; he and the other wardens are responsible for certain animals (hence his name), but Rook is resisting the interesting connection he has with the birds until the end, when he learns to accept it (I know, shocking); a character gets killed that forces Rook to think more about how selfish he’s being (I know, shocking); there’s a shocking (I know!) secret about Exodus that Rook doesn’t care about until he has to. Again, it’s not bad, but it does feel a bit more by-the-numbers that the other Ghost Machine titles that Johns has been writing. Still, it’s an entertaining comic, and Johns does a good job constructing it, even if it feels a bit clichéd. Of course, like most of these titles, the art is quite good, as Fabok has a lot of fun with the decaying planet and civilization, as well as the over-sized and aggressive animals of the planet. He gets to do some big splashes, which he does nicely, and he gives us a world that has run a bit riot, which is neat. Fabok has gotten better with some action scenes, which is nice because he’s drawing some big fights in this comic. It’s a good-looking comic.

I am going to get the next volume, because it’s a pretty good comic book, but I don’t love it as much as the other ones. Hey, that’s cool!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Sanction (January) by Ray Fawkes (writer), Antonio Fuso (artist), Emilio Lecce (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer), and Marla Eizik (editor). $17.99, 102 pgs, Mad Cave Studios.

The president of Mad Cave, Mark Irwin, writes the introduction to this, because it was his idea, and he says his germ was kind of “Gorky Park meets Apt Pupil,” which changed a bit in the telling because this doesn’t feel so much like Apt Pupil, but I had finished reading Gorky Park right before I read this, so it was on my mind, and I guess if you set a book in late-Soviet Russia, you must compare it to Gorky Park! The comparison certainly works, which is not a bad thing – Gorky Park is a good book – but I wonder if that’s the law: “Oh, the book is set in the 1980s Soviet Union? It must be like Gorky Park, right?”

Our hero, Detective Boris, is called to crime scene by his superior, Detective Pavel, on New Year’s Day, 1987. A woman has been murdered in Leningrad, and Pavel wants nothing to do with it. He calls in Boris, which seems foolish immediately. Pavel says it’s because Boris could use an easy case, and all he has to do is find a drunk guy and charge him, as he thinks the dead woman is a prostitute. But … it seems like Pavel knows that the reason Boris doesn’t solve many cases is because he’s not willing to go along with the Way Things Are Done, which in Soviet Russia means pretending that crime doesn’t exist. Boris, of course, begins digging, and finds out that there’s a lot more to the case than anyone thinks. This, in turn, gets him in trouble with the authorities, who want simply to report amazing crime statistics and keep living in their communist paradise.

Fawkes is a good writer, so he does a nice job constructing the narrative, leading Boris around, connecting dots and realizing how bad things really are, and keeping us on our toes with regard to who he can trust. For me, it’s always interesting reading a book set in a country with an oppressive government, because people still have to live and survive, and how they do that is often fascinating (of course, these days every book set in the United States fits that scenario, but let’s not think about that right now). Boris and his wife, Sofia, have a nice life, but it could go away at any moment, so Boris has to walk a fine line when it comes to investigating the case (and, occasionally, he acts really stupidly, because in this kind of fiction, the hero often acts stupidly when he should probably shut up and pick a better fight – this is known in comics as the Blue Beetle Syndrome), and Fawkes does a nice job showing how difficult it is for him to remain quiet but also to keep pushing. Stories of conspiracies and corruption aren’t new, of course, and they’re certainly not exclusive to the Soviet Union, but it always feels like in stories set in authoritarian countries, the paranoia is more real, and Fawkes makes it work for him. Fuso is a good choice for art – he has that harsh, angular line and he uses blacks well, so a story set in a cold, depressing, brutalist city and the surrounding countryside works quite well. Fuso does a good job making it feel like the world itself is crushing Boris, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

This is a pretty keen comic. In 30 years, when we’re reading stories about the oppression of TrumpWorld, I’ll probably say a lot of the same things!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Hey, that seems like a good place to stop. The pile grows smaller! And now we’re into May, so can I finish these and still keep up with those comics? It’s a mystery, but we’ll find out together! Have a great day, everyone!