Victorian Undead II (2011) #5

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Hmm… is Edginton subtly suggesting the next Victorian Undead series will feature Frankenstein’s Monster? I hope so.

Again, there are some needlessly weak pages, but this time I can’t blame it on anyone but Fabbri. Maybe he was rushed. It’s a shame it’s during the big finale with Dracula and Holmes.

Edginton comes up with a good plot for the conclusion—even a great reveal—but his ending is a little too pat. I suppose some of it comes from being too much a mix of Holmes and Dracula and not enough of either. Watson’s barely a character this series and Edginton, except in the first issue, hasn’t done much to make it feel like another Holmes case.

It’s still a good series, however. Even with the various art problems throughout.

I was hoping Dracula would be more interesting.

Oh, yeah; Edginton does leave his other sequel setup intact too.

Victorian Undead II (2011) #4

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Okay, it’s not Fabbri doing the terrible pages, it’s Guevara on his own. And they are terrible. He can’t maintain the shape of a human head. There are four or five of his pages this issue and it’s so bad, I wanted to put the comic down and stop reading it.

Otherwise, again, good issue. Edginton introduces something he might keep around later—he really ought to do a straight adaptation of Dracula, revising as he sees fit, because he comes up with some great developments here and they don’t necessarily need to be bound to the Victorian Undead universe. This issue, once more, has me hoping DC doesn’t let the property languish with Wildstorm gone.

Edginton has a good pace this issue, getting through a lot of events (even getting in Holmes references) to set up the cliffhanger. It’s a soft cliffhanger, sort of unnecessary, but it does work.

Victorian Undead II (2011) #3

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As ineffectual as I find Fabbri’s Saturday morning cartoon style, at least he usually works at it. This issue brings in Mario Guevara to ink him and there are some incredible mishaps. One section appears to either be without inks (in which case, it’s clear Fabbri does most of his work while inking) and it makes that scene particularly unpleasant to read. I sat wondering if Tom Mandrake had done it as a guest and then jokingly did terrible work. No, no, he did not.

Reading this issue—Holmes, Watson and the Van Helsing get together and talk about the Dracula events up until now—it suggests Edginton never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, just saw Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He borrows film creations part and parcel.

It’s not bad, just interesting. He adds some logic to the Dracula story, which is utterly missing in Stoker’s original.

Problems aside, a decent issue.

Victorian Undead II (2011) #2

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Edginton moves the story along a lot faster than I was expecting. I imagine it’s to bring the Dracula supporting cast into it sooner; the last half of the issue is Holmes and Watson teaming up with Professor Van Helsing and company. If I thought Fabbri’s Sherlock Holmes was funny, his Van Helsing is absolutely hilarious. Maybe Wildstorm was telling him to make them look like silly movie actors in case the series gets optioned.

Fabbri also rips off the battle armor—the very distinguishable battle armor—from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, so he’s clearly seen movies. He’s just ignoring the ones with Sherlock Holmes.

The first half fires a bunch of flares. There’s some boring exposition, then Dracula and his minions and neither scene is particularly good. The Dracula one is requisite and a little better. The stuff with Holmes and the gypsies is weak.

The second half recovers though.

Victorian Undead II (2011) #1

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Let’s see… Edginton doesn’t just bring in Dracula, he also brings in zombie-hunting gypsies, a conspiracy involving the British throne involving vampires (which changes up the series being a straight Dracula adaptation) and London rebuilding. The interesting part of London rebuilding is how it was a facet of Scarlet Traces too. While the first Victorian Undead series had its problems, he’s been able to build on its resolution quite well. Hopefully the franchise survives DC scuttling Wildstorm.

Unsurprisingly, I have issues with Davide Fabbri’s artwork. Tom Mandrake’s back for a page and it’s another instance of where he should have been the artist, not a guest star. Fabbri takes his time on Victorian London, getting in some great details, but it still looks insipidly commercial overall. The choice continues to bewilder.

Edginton takes his time, splitting between foreboding and Holmes and Watson investigating. He definitely piques the reader’s curiosity.

Victorian Undead (2010) #6

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Victorian Undead ends, unfortunately, with a set-up for a sequel. My problem isn’t with the prospect of another Holmes versus zombies series, it’s more to do with Edginton’s set-up itself. His grand reveals for the series are, for the most part, bad and he suggests any sequel will directly involve them.

This issue, with its action-packed conclusion, plays pretty quickly. There’s a hurried, confusing resolution to the conspiracy and a callback to the first issue, which is also hurried and confused, and then Edginton moves to the final sequence.

In some ways, it seems as though Edginton is setting up a Scarlet Traces like London for Holmes to jaunt around in–there’s futuristic (steampunk) technology here, without any explanation of its origins–and I guess it’s an interesting setting, but his Holmes and Watson are so boring… I’m rather indifferent.

I was hoping for a lot more.

Victorian Undead (2010) #5

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Umm, ok, I’m now confused and it’s all Fabbri’s fault. I can’t tell his living Doctor Moriarty from his living Colonel Moran… or whatever rank that character had reached.

And I’m upset because I was actually going to complement Fabbri for his Holmes this issue. A couple panels he took the time to age line Holmes’s face, so it didn’t look like Ashton Kutcher would be playing him in the movie adaptation.

Otherwise, the issue pretends to have some detecting but really just talks about it and moves along the zombie story. I think I’d be more partial to the comic if Holmes were less of an emphasis–if he were just a player in the story of zombies attacking late nineteenth century London instead of the ostensible principle.

There are some cool scenes with zombie attacks and so on; the conspiracy foreshadowing, however, is rather unnecessary.

But acceptable overall.

Victorian Undead 6 (June 2010)

I was hoping for a lot more.

CREDITS

Inferno; writer, Ian Edgington; artist, Davide Fabbri; colorist, Carrie Strachan; letterer, Saida Temofonte; editors, Kristy Quinn and Ben Abernathy; publisher, Wildstorm.

Victorian Undead 5 (May 2010)

Umm, ok, I’m now confused and it’s all Fabbri’s fault. I can’t tell his living Doctor Moriarty from his living Colonel Moran… or whatever rank that character had reached.

There are some cool scenes with zombie attacks and so on; the conspiracy foreshadowing, however, is rather unnecessary.

But acceptable overall.

CREDITS

The Earth Shall Give Up Its Dead; writer, Ian Edgington; artist, Davide Fabbri; colorist, Carrie Strachan; letterer, Saida Temofonte; editors, Kristy Quinn and Ben Abernathy; publisher, Wildstorm.

Victorian Undead (2010) #4

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Now here’s a way to pad an issue… Tom Mandrake illustrates a flashback (with a far more traditional–read recognizable–Holmes). It’s Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls with a different conclusion–Moriarty has zombie juice ready to save him after he… ahem… falls. It’s one heck of a way to waste pages. The artwork’s lovely and all but it’s not narratively important. In fact, it’d have been a lot more effective in the first issue without it being clear it was Moriarty.

The rest of the issue is just bridging material, presumably, to set up the climax of the series. There’s finally a big zombie battle in London, but we only get to see a little bit of it, with Moriarty (the zombie) showing it to his sidekick (and the reader) through a window.

Then tanks show up to save Holmes and Watson (and Mrs. Hudson) and it’s silly.