It’s back to reality, but Lapham keeps his new formula for figuring in interconnected exposition. Maybe Beth and her friend are the girls from the night of the first party. I kind of hope not, because it makes her meeting Orson–who thankfully doesn’t appear this issue–way too contrived.
The issue has Beth and the friend out swimming, only they end up fighting because they’re both going crazy on the run. Then Beth has this crazy adventure with a movie star and her odd entourage. The end brings everything together with devastating result. It’s like Lapham took a while to figure out what stories to do–and how uncomfortable to make things. He’s got a great balance this story.
He’s finally turning Beth into a decent character. She was one note as Orson’s angry girlfriend but Lapham hasn’t given her room to stretch until now. It works out well.
B+
CREDITS
The Supportive Friend; writer, artist, and letterer, David Lapham; editor, Deborah Purcell; publisher, El Capitán Books.
I’m getting tired of the pilot issue. What about a nice story, instead of something establishing tone or the ground situation or whatever. It’s a strange thing to want something more standard–even a small resolution would be nice–because Jason Aaron has lots of opportunity in Southern Bastards and he doesn’t utilize any of it. Instead, it feels like an adaption of a novel or something. There’s just enough information, but no enthusiasm.
Gerber does the stupid second person narration, but not a lot of it. Most of the Man-Thing story he does a close third person for Man-Thing; it works a lot better. Especially he confirms Man-Thing has no mouth.
Really, it’s necessary to do a Batman wink? It’s not necessary. It’s pointless given neither Waid nor Samnee are identified with Batman. So maybe it’s a DC jab. Eh, who cares.
It’s the best issue of Stray Bullets so far and it’s an Amy Racecar issue. I’ll pause for a moment and let that situation sink in. The fictional character of one of Lapham’s fictional characters has the best issue in ten.
Lots of drama this issue. There’s some comedy too, from McCoy and Scotty, but there’s also running around.
Unfortunately, the final issue of Wolfman and Cockrum's Star Trek: The Motion Picture compounds all the problems they had in the second issue. While they're skilled at densely packing scenes with characters and dialogue, Wolfman apparently can't cut back on the events enough to give the issue a good flow.
Rucka shows all the subplots coming together at the end of the issue for the soft cliffhanger. It’s not particularly dramatic stuff; the connection is contrived, which is okay because Lazarus is kind of a big soap opera. The kids hating their rich father is enough to make it a soap opera. Through in an “adopted” genetically engineered sibling and it’s even bigger.
I don't know if I'd say Bullets is back on track, as Lapham's been relatively uneven so it's hard to know what kind of track he's trying to keep the series on. But this issue's definitely an improvement, just in terms with how tightly he tells the story.
Evan Dorkin’s sense of humor on The Eltingville Club is nowhere near as peculiar as his plotting on the comic. There’s some peculiarities to it since Dorkin mocks every single character to some degree or another and his protagonist is one of the more reprehensible characters in there comic.
There’s a really impressive scene with a lots of dialogue and Cockrum having to fit something around seven people into a small panel. Cockrum and Wolfman occasionally do some masterful adaptation in this issue. It’s nice enough to make up for the bad moments.
Romero is still setting things up. At least there’s not too much with the vampires this issue and the SWAT zombie making friends with a little runaway is kind of cool. There’s a lot of time spent on new supporting cast members, some rednecks who are in town to start trouble; they’re weak characters. Not to mention the woman’s a rip-off of Frank Miller’s neo-Nazi gal from Dark Knight.
The interconnected thing is exhausting because Lapham has to take time out from the story to fill the reader in on the connection. For example, Orson the high school kid is now on the run with the girl he met at the end of his first issue for stealing coke from crime boss Harry. At least I think she’s the girl from the end of that issue. Anyway, it probably takes Lapham three pages to get that information out of the way.
Brisson has hit a plateau with Sheltered. He’s already established he’s willing to have the kids be awful, he’s already established there aren’t many limits, so where’s there to go? The story can’t leave the compound–though this issue has a bit of a field trip from it–and he’s also not getting rid of any of the main characters yet.
It’s going to be difficult to talk about this one. Not because there’s anything particularly wrong with this first issue of Marvel’s adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In fact, there might not be anything wrong with it at all. I suppose the art could be better, but Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson do all right. Cockrum loves doing some of the space panels.
Not much happens this issue; the smart zombie gets away at the end, there are other smart zombies out there, lots of dumb vampires doing stuff to get themselves found out. While he was hiding the vampires, Romero used them sparingly. This issue it’s different. They’re everywhere. The human characters from the first couple issues are practically just cameos.
It’s more adventures of Ginny, the girl with the terrible mother–not like “ha ha” terrible, but like abused one. Her dad gets cancer. Her dad who literally has to protect her from her mother and her sister. So the scary part is his leaving her, which Lapham sort of ignores.
Lapham calls back big time to the original Stray Bullets this issue. He works it in as background, very, very discreet background. His expository dialogue is good enough a new reader could walk right in. The neat part of not going overboard with a callback is it doesn’t make the comic seem too forced. It feels far more organic.
Steve Gerber writes the entire Man-Thing feature with second person narration. Everything thing is the narration talking to Man-Thing, who can’t respond as he doesn’t speak. And because it’s the narration. But if he had talked back to the narrator, the story would be better.
Ennis sure does like going out on an ominous ending with this one. It’s somewhere between a hard and soft cliffhanger; maybe a soft-boiled one. He hints at disaster earlier too, rather blatantly. Hopefully his time to cop out with a dream sequence has passed.
And here we get the first Amy Racecar story. Amy’s probably a stand-in for the little girl with the scars, given how silly some of the details of the story get. Amy’s a thirty-first century outlaw on a Dillinger-esque crime spree. So it’s a child’s fantasy. Also, Amy eventually gets scars on her face from her awful mother.
If I had to guess–and I’m just going to guess because I don’t want to go look it up–from the credits on Sheena, I think script writer Steven E. de Souza and his relation, probably son, David de Souza, wrote a spec script for a movie. It did not sell. I’d even guess, based on the number of vapid college-age characters, it was written during a teen movie boom.
Of the three stories this issue–the first two are original, the third is a sixties reprint–Man-Thing is the easy winner. The other two aren't any competition.
The Stop Button 