Beware the Creeper (2003) #2

Now, here’s the great Cliff Chiang art I remember on **Beware the Creeper**. He maintains quality with faces while still doing all the great Parisian street scenes. He’s got a lovely sequence with a girl, apparently living on the street, waking up and starting her day. It’s charming, which **Creeper** can often be, when writer Jason Hall lets it. Most of the time, however, he’s holding onto the reins way too tight for funny business.
This issue picks up a month after last issue. That issue ended with someone attacking and raping Judith, probably some rich boy painting poser (last issue pointed an arrow at him, this issue acts as though he’s already been revealed). Then the Creeper appeared and terrorized the poser for a few panels, telling him to “**Beware**”.
“Beware” becomes the Creeper’s catchphrase as she has nighttime madcap adventures in Paris. We don’t see many of them, just the ones where she’s attacking the poser’s family. She starts the issue stealing some of their jewels and tossing them in the river. The jewels, not the family.
Just like the comic heavily implies the poser is the rapist, it also implies Judith is the Creeper. Of course, her identical twin Maddy is always around too, so who knows. Hall’s got a handful of moves he can make.
But we don’t learn anything about the Creeper. We don’t learn anything about Maddy and Judith’s lost month. Judith and her surrealist friends want to start some trouble, Maddy wants to work on her new play and garden. Then the blond guy cop is around too, getting suspicious about Judith and the Creeper.
The art’s a wow, the story’s baseline okay. There’s a cute **Year One** “your feast is nearly over” montage and some literary cameos, but there’s no character development; in fact, Hall works intentionally against it.
Thank goodness Chiang’s clicking.