As finishes go, Lono doesn’t have a bad one. It’s not great. It’s good enough. Azzarello seems to be showing a lot of restraint, like he didn’t want to do too for a finish. Like he didn’t want turn make Lono into too much of an action hero.
Instead, Azzarello focuses on the bad guy. He’s comical at this point, just because no one’s scared of him anymore and he’s got the whole twin aquarium thing going on. It’s humor. Very, very black humor, but still humor.
But the story isn’t a humorous one. The stuff with the priest and the nun isn’t funny at all. The issue doesn’t have a tone. Azzarello doesn’t commit to any of the ones he toys with.
It’s a shame Azzarello couldn’t maintain the level of intricate plotting he had at the beginning of the series. Like I said, though, the issue’s not bad.
B
CREDITS
¡El Perro Loco!; writer, Brian Azzarello; artist, Eduardo Risso; colorist, Trish Mulvihill; letterer, Clem Robins; editors, Gregory Lockard and Will Dennis; publisher, Vertigo.
For the first time, I’m very unimpressed with Brother Lono. Azzarello is dragging things out–Lono’s getting tortured, the priest is trying to patch things up with the drug lords (or something, Azzarello is iffy on his actual motives), and the sister is going to get the sheriff. These subplots don’t come together. Azzarello races through each of them, with Lono’s being the worst because it’s a torture scene. Not particularly amusing. Or even engaging.
I hate the moments where the writer makes a big revelation his protagonist is actually the biggest badass in the world. At best, they’re hollow, at worst… well, they’re hollow and bad. Except Azzarello pulls it off here. And he pulls it off because of how he’s structured this series so far.
The hard cliffhanger suggests Azzarello is finally getting to the inevitable bloody showdown in Brother Lono. He’s been setting it up, foreshadowing it with corpses mostly; it sort of had to happen, otherwise there wouldn’t be an epical plot line… but it’s also unfortunate.
Azzarello continues what one might call a peculiar approach to Lono. Nothing big happens during the issue; there might be cliffhanger–this issue has a soft one–and there’s a possibly big followup to the previous issue’s cliffhanger at the beginning, but it’s very mild otherwise. It’s horrific, sure. There are drug lords doing terrible things to one another and to regular people (this issue it’s more the hint of terrible things), but it’s almost tranquil.
Brother Lono is tough this time around. It has the first attempt at a issue long subplot, which isn’t a bad thing at all. There are bodies on holy land, which ends up causing trouble for just about everyone.
Okay, Azzarello sort of sets up the series here. He’s going split it between Lono, June the new nun and the assistant to the drug lords. I don’t think there’s anything else.
I’m not sure I understand anything in this first issue of Brother Lono except the titular character has been in the town jail for a while and he gets out. He’s on a mission to escort a visiting nun–of course she doesn’t look like a nun–to the parish. I think.
I’ve got to give Azzarello credit. He doesn’t just let Comedian get a little loose. He runs it entirely off the rails; with integrity, though. Definitely with integrity. Even when Rorschach and Nite Owl show up, Azzarello never lets the comic become a cheap tie-in.
Azzarello finally pushes too hard with the political history lesson and loses control of the series. It’s not a bad issue, just mediocre. Jones can’t draw Nixon, which is a problem.