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.

Halloween: 30 Years of Terror (August 2008)

Halloween: 30 Years of Terror–more specifically, writer Stefan Hutchinson–is going to make me make avery bad pun. It’s not 30 Years of Terror, it’s thirty pages of terrible.

I’ll get the art out of the way. Danijel Zezelj is excellent, Jim Daly’s medicare, Brett Weldele’s good, Jeffrey Zornow and Lee Ferguson are medicore, Tim Seeley’s mediocre. There, done.

Hutchinson’s idea of a Halloween special is to do a crappy sequel to the first two movies while setting up the second two Jamie Lee Curtis sequels. Occasionally, he’ll have a good idea and then his terrible writing will drag it into the dumps. The comic’s very gory and if he’s celebrating the anniversary of the original movie… well, it’s not gory at all. 30 Years is never intelligently scary. Hutchinson’s too cheap.

It reads fast, the art’s occasionally good, but Hutchinson’s writing is absolute crap. Halloween deserves more respect.

CREDITS

Trick or Treat; artist, Danijel Zezelj; colorist, Nick Bell. P.O.V.; artist, Jim Daly; colorist, Rob Ruffalo. Visiting Hours; artist and colorist, Brett Weldele. Tommy and the Boogeyman; artists, Lee Ferguson and Jeff Zornow; colorists, Zornow and Ruffalo. Repetition Compulsion; artist, Tim Seeley; colorist, Elizabeth John. Writer, Stefan Hutchinson; letterer, Ed Dukeshire; editors, Stephen Christy and Cody DeMatteis; publisher, Devil’s Due Publishing.