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Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #4
The issue ends with an afterword from Dick Giordano talking about finishing the Dracula adaptation thirty years after he and writer Roy Thomas started it. He confirms my suspicions they didn’t actually have it plotted out; rather, they did that work thirty years later. Or twenty-eight or whatever. Plus, it sounds like artist Giordano did a lot of the scene breakouts—it’s a Marvel book, after all—but also, no wonder the story’s got no pacing.
I can’t remember the last quarter of Dracula, the novel, but assuming the big events in this issue are correct, there’s not much Thomas is responsible for doing poorly. The fearless vampire hunters treating Mina as damaged, sinful goods? From the book. I do wonder if Van Helsing’s journal, written in awkward, stilted, but proper English, is from the novel or if Thomas paraphrased. When Van Helsing speaks, he jumbles his word order (a non-native speaker, he’s Dutch). It’s distracting.
Also distracting is white-haired Jonathan Harker (his wife was unfaithful, regardless of being brainwashed and mind controlled, his hair was bound to change). He gets the narrator seat a bit, and even though I’m only a few months delayed, his diary doesn’t sound like his diary at the beginning of the series.
I’d also forgotten how we were headed towards a terribly anti-climatic ending, which the comic does nothing to improve. Over-reliance on the narration, workman art from Giordano, stamp, done, move on to the next. The epilogue’s bewildering and, I suppose, where Thomas is most at fault. There must’ve been something better, maybe even something relevant.
The art’s okay. This new material is about getting through, not showing off. Almost everything is a montage sequence of some kind or another (with the narration tying the panels together). It doesn’t let Giordano work up any moment with the characters.
In the end, however, it’s not Thomas or Giordano’s fault Bram Stoker left the villain out of the last fifth of the story. It’s Giordano’s fault Van Helsing looks like a mischievous but not malevolent Keebler Elf, but whatever.
And the weird “follow the money” investigation the boys conduct is boring. They found Dracula thanks to accountancy.
Yawn.
I really wish they’d gotten to finish this back in the seventies. It’s cool they got to finish it thirty years later. But cool isn’t enough to make it succeed. Thomas and Giordano are just being too rote, especially for the finish.
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See How They Run (2022, Tom George)
Sam Rockwell can do an English accent. See How They Run occasionally has him use it but mostly has him stone-face while sidekick Saoirse Ronan amiably chatters away. The movie only asks Rockwell to act once or twice; he can do it with the accent. He’s not really a stunt cast because the movie doesn’t have him do anything, so it doesn’t get anything from him. He and Ronan are fine together. She’s the one who acts, he reacts, so their scenes all work off her momentum. For a while, it seems like the film’s building towards them as a duo, which works.
Sadly, it doesn’t end up going there, instead taking an ill-advised diversion involving a big-time Shining nod (though Amanda McArthur’s production design sets it up, lots of red carpets), where detective Rockwell talks to the murder victim at an art deco bar. It’s part of the second red herring suspect—as narrator Adrien Brody (an American film director in London adapting a stage play) would say, comes with the territory in a whodunit. See How They Run constantly reminds it’s a genre piece and shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Usually to modest but satisfactory effect. The problem with the second red herring suspect isn’t the red herring; it’s the lack of a third. They just go right into the finish, which involves bringing in the supporting cast and putting Rockwell and Ronan in a charming but pointless driving montage.
Because once the film inexplicably gives up on Ronan and Rockwell as a duo, it becomes a relatively engaging Agatha Christie spoof. Ronan and Rockwell were just diversions. Though then, the movie ditches the suspect pool to a fantastic cameo and an elaborate in-joke involving Brody’s film director before finally settling on being an unofficial advertisement for the Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the world.
See How They Run is set in 1953, during the first cast’s run, meaning someone is playing Richard Attenborough—Harris Dickinson. Dickinson is 6’1” and change. Attenborough was infamously shorter; pretty sure it was a plot point in at least one picture, if not more (he was 5’7”). The problem with Dickinson is he’s never a suspect. Neither he nor wife Pearl Chanda. It wouldn’t matter except the movie’s short murder suspects.
The first prime suspect is screenwriter David Oyelowo, who doesn’t get along with the victim. He doesn’t get along with the victim, Brody, his boyfriend Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, or anyone else. Oyelowo gets the film’s “and” credit; he’s the closest thing to a stunt cast.
And he’s not up for the task. He’s okay, but never anything more, once too often less. It’s an adequate performance, nothing more. Ruth Wilson and Brody are the other supporting cast members with the most to do. Brody’s amusing as the unlikable American, while Wilson’s only around to fill in backstory for other suspects.
Director George often uses a split screen device to show different characters’ perspectives. It’s almost good once, but it’s a padding gimmick. Run’s artificially enthusiastic.
Luckily, the cast and production are enough to get it through. It’s not a good star vehicle for Ronan, but she’s definitely the star in it. Until the third act, anyway. The third act’s a mess.
See How They Run’s fine. Affable, likable, engaging, disposable, which puts it ahead of the Mousetrap play if the samples are any indication.
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Shadows on the Grave (2016) #5
Creator Richard Corben’s got some co-writing help again on this issue of Shadows and it doesn’t work out. The whole issue just never quite works out, including the Greek epic, which bums me out.
The issue starts okay, with a one-page romance comic gag. Nice art too. The issue’s got excellent art from Corben throughout—including some great art on one of the stories—but it’s not enough to compensate for the slight writing.
The feature stories are all eight pages, which is a Shadows no-no. Corben does much better when he varies the length for what the story actually needs. None of the four features are balanced well this issue. It’s such a bummer.
The first story is about a guy who gets lost in the rain in rural America, pulls up at a stranger’s house, demands the old lady put him up for the night. Now, elements of that narrative have already appeared in Shadows within the last couple of issues. What’s the house’s secret, will the rude dude survive, and so on. It’s a mad-libs Corben horror strip.
The following story is the exact same situation. It feels very familiar—the protagonist is a shitty nephew gone to swindle a rich aunt (same setup as a story… in the last couple issues). When he gets there, his aunt’s got a secretary who makes him wait to see her, which gets the guy curious enough to snoop. Disaster ensues.
Beth Reed co-writes both stories. The first one’s better than the second, but the second is where it’s clear what’s going on. The script’s trying too hard to fit the “formula,” which seems to be because of Reed. It doesn’t make sense for Corben to write “more Corben” but with a co-writer.
I did just have the thought maybe a few writers used the same prompts from Corben. If so, those stories obviously should’ve been presented together and with context. This issue’s entries would still be lesser compared to whenever they appeared before, but the book wouldn’t seem repetitive, at least.
The third feature is Corben solo writing. A blind woman is in Africa trying to find a cure from a remote, hostile tribe. If Corben establishes the time period, it wasn’t forcefully enough I remember, but hopefully, it’s sometime in the mid-twentieth century and not today.
The art’s phenomenal, with Corben illustrating from the point of view of the blind woman, which is incredible stuff. The script’s just okay—the plot’s underwhelming, and the twist is creaky—but the art makes up for it. Though it’s still a bummer. The first story didn’t work out, the second story didn’t work out, the third story didn’t work out.
Surely the Greek epic will come through.
Incomplete. The Deneaus chapter gets an incomplete. It’s eight pages too, which is way too short. Corben rushes the opening hook, which brings the Greek gods into the story, but then the main action is about the shitty prince and his shitty king dad. Corben pads around it a little, but the whole story is just their villainous banquet.
It doesn’t hurt the story, big picture-wise, but it does stall it out and bleed momentum all over the road. Some exquisite art on it too. Just not the story.
I once worried Shadows would be a “one good issue, one bad” situation. Now I hope there aren’t any more of these troubled issues before this wraps up.
Unsuccessful Shadows is still successful comics, of course, so the issue’s time reasonably well-spent.
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #26
I’m not sure if this issue’s Marv Wolfman’s best Tomb, but it’s his most ambitious. He weaves the story—which involves a missing magical statue, a dead shop owner, Frank Drake and Taj being shitty dudes, a Kull-related flashback, and Dracula’s familiar, Shiela, meeting a British witch—through Old Testament verses. The shop owner’s Jewish, and his son (David, who seems like he’s going to recur even after next issue) is visiting him from a yeshiva. Just as the old man is about to complete his life’s work, some bad guys break in and kill him.
Dracula shows up a few minutes later at the active crime scene, wanting the statue and realizing the son’s got a piece of it. Dracula tasks Shiela with befriending David, and he takes her to see this old British witch who tells them about Kull. No editor’s notes with issue numbers, which was kind of disappointing. This statue can grant wishes—an Infinity Gauntlet you don’t need to snap—and Dracula wants it to… make himself immortal immortal, not vampire immortal. So he can still be evil but during the day.
David and Shiela are a nice couple. Like, Tomb of Dracula’s humans are usually obnoxious. Look at Frank Drake, who’s laying about since abandoning Rachel Van Helsing and the vampire hunters. It’s been three days since he left her—I swear this book has three different timelines going at once—and a sexy troubleshooter named Chastity Jones has tracked him down. She wants to give him a job being rich and fabulous again, plus she wants to get busy. Does he want to call Rachel (who he luvs, he said), or does he want to get horizontal?
So, immediately, David’s a bit more sympathetic a human character.
Oh, wait, then there’s Taj. He only gets a page because he’s not white; he’s moping around India because beating up his wife last issue or whatever didn’t make him feel better. Some old friend comes to plead with him to see her. So he beats that guy up too. Taj is a dick.
After spending the issue in the literal shadows, watching the humans do their things, Dracula gets into some trouble of his own while looking for the statue pieces, leading to a surprising cliffhanger. Though only because Dracula assumes he can’t possibly be in danger, but there wouldn’t be much of a comic without it.
It’s a strange combination of character study, mystical adventure, and Dracula. There are some bumps, but Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s art is exquisite, and Wolfman’s working his buns off.
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Dan Dare (2007) #4
I’ve never read any Dan Dare besides this series. I assume it’s some British Silver Age book about British derring-do in a sci-fi setting. So I don’t know if writer Garth Ennis is doing some homage with the pacing of this issue or just the plotting of the series in general.
Here’s what the first issue promised: retired space adventurer Dan Dare coming back to save the galaxy (colonized by the British, natch) from the Mekon, his old enemy (and presumably the main villain in the original Dare comics).
So far, the series has delivered: a traitor Prime Minister, Dare, and sidekick Digby stranded on a hostile alien world full of monsters. No galaxy saving from Dan, just people saving.
In this issue, Ennis reveals that anti-whatever plotting is intentional and will continue. He leans heavily on using talking heads scenes to fill in the backstory. The issue opens with the Prime Minister and the Mekon, who’s a silly-looking fifties alien but terrifying in his brevity. He seems to have some psychic control over a sizeable percentage of the population (both aliens and humans, including the PM), but it’s unclear. You wouldn’t want to ask him.
Ennis splits the issue between the Mekon, the Home Secretary on Earth, as she uncovers the plot to sell out humanity, and Dan on the alien planet with the monsters. Things are getting grim for Dan, which is precisely where they’re supposed to be but also not. The plan needs Dan to be somewhere else; no one could predict he’d try to save some dumbass colonists because they haven’t read the old Dan Dare either.
It’s a fantastic mix of wild sci-fi, political thriller, and British colonial action, with one heck of a tense finale. Ennis and artist Gary Erskine deliver a dynamite (no pun) close to the first (informal) arc. Presumably, the series will reset itself going forward, though I also have no idea because Ennis is very unpredictable here. Delightfully so.
Erskine seems rushed at times—though the incredibly boring alien ships don’t help; hopefully, it doesn’t trend. Dan’d survive it just fine (even rushed, Erskine’s solid), but still. He’s got some very enthusiastic panels; the more, the better.
Dare’s a damn fine book.