Stray Bullets 40 (October 2005)

Stray Bullets #40 This issue is the story of Kevin’s father. Kevin is the bad guy who has kidnapped Virginia with badder guy Huss.

Kevin’s dad is deaf and he’s a drunk because a low level mobster took off one of his fingers and he can’t hear his kid trying to gang rape a teenage girl. Lapham’s aiming for the stars here as far as artistic ambition.

Oddly, he clearly thinks it’s a great idea–the storytelling device with the deaf guy moving in front of all this action and not being aware of it. But the art’s crap, so it’s not like he worked on it.

Lapham also thinks it’s a good idea to reduce a character who was once one of the best female comic book characters to a mannequin who’s single purpose to be exploited. Apparently, Lapham can’t do anything else with Bullets but assault, rape or molest Virginia.

It’s repugnant.

CREDITS

Zippity Doo-Dah!; writer, artist, and letterer, David Lapham; editors, Renee Miller and Maria Lapham; publisher, El Capitán Books.

Tomb Raider 1 (February 2014)

297094 20140227154909 large Thank goodness Gail Simone has Lara Croft say “mates” and use kilometers instead of miles. Wouldn’t want to forget she’s British. Or something. Those little details, along with the forced exposition, drag the reader out of what’s already a chore.

Why would Dark Horse bother licensing Tomb Raider if they were just going to give it to artists who can’t draw action? The inks don’t seem to do much, they certainly don’t lend any motion to Nicolás Daniel Selma’s lead-footed pencils. There are motion lines. Maybe inker Juan Gedeon added them, thinking they were enough. They aren’t.

Having never played the game, I’m not sure if Simone’s script is meant to appeal to fans or to general readers. If it’s the latter, the comic’s in real trouble. There’s only one scene where the character shows any natural personality and it’s forced (she’s encountering sexism).

At least it reads fast.

CREDITS

Season of the Witch; writer, Gail Simone; penciller, Nicolás Daniel Selma; inker, Juan Gedeon; colorist, Michael Atiyeh; letterer, Michael Heisler; editors, Shantel LaRocque, Ian Tucker, Aaron Walker and Dave Marshall; publisher, Dark Horse Comics.

Pariah 1 (February 2014)

Unnamed I don’t have time for Pariah. Writers Aron Warner (is he famous? He alone gets his name above the title) and Philip Gelatt devise the most annoying dialogue and narration juxtaposition imaginable and seem to think it’s awesome. It’s not awesome, it’s terrible.

They start a thought in narration, trail off with an ellipses and pick up a totally different subject in dialogue, all in the same panel. I’m not sure what kind of art is necessary to make putting up with such an atrocious narrative device worthwhile, but this comic doesn’t have it.

Artist Brett Weldele isn’t bad. He’s kind of like Ben Templesmith lite. Nothing lite is going to be good enough.

I think they’re trying to be different, to somehow make Pariah immediately compelling and, if so, they don’t just fail, their editor fails too.

Pariah is the kind of comic you’d want to return for cash.

CREDITS

Writers, Aron Warner and Philip Gelatt; artist and letterer, Brett Weldele; editor, Daniel Chabon; publisher, Dark Horse Comics.