Reading Vampironica, I sometimes thought maybe Greg Smallwood’s art would look better if it were a black and white seventies horror comic magazine. But no, I don’t think it’d make a difference. Smallwood has a very thin line. It makes the comic look like someone’s zooming in on the art. It feels rushed.
The comic itself is very rushed. I think it reads in four or five minutes tops. It starts with Veronica as Buffy, then it turns out it’s Veronica as Blade. Lots of Archie cast cameos. Lots of solid jokes from Smallwoods Greg and Meg. It’s a breezy, fun five minutes.
But it’s just five minutes. Probably more like four. Because there’s no dawdling. The only thing Smallwood emphasizes is the expressions, but his staging is so rushed, they’re almost speed bumps. They work for emphasis.
Vampironica is completely readable and totally disposable. It’s an ongoing, which is sort of worse.
Reading Vampironica, I sometimes thought maybe Greg Smallwood’s art would look better if it were a black and white seventies horror comic magazine. But no, I don’t think it’d make a difference. Smallwood has a very think line. It makes the comic look like someone’s zooming in on the art. It feels rushed.
Parker does a great job with the Arboria adventure–with Dale getting to hang out with some Hawkmen and then rescue Flash and Zarkov on her own. There’s a lot of personality for the Arborians–well, the people with the wings, less so for the sirens who don’t have wings. Parker keeps it relatively simple; maybe too much so, but it’s Flash Gordon and it works with simplicity.
Nitz is wrapping everything together rather nicely, but then he goes a little overboard. He explains the plan in detail only to throw a significant wrench in it. That wrench is another ghost possessing protagonist John; presumably this act of vengeance will make things difficult for the A plot.
You know, I’ve been talking about limited series spending too much time in their last issue setting up the sequel series but, dang, if Jai Nitz and Greg Smallwood don’t pull it off beautiful for Dream Thief: Escape.
Nitz and Smallwood do the improbable–they close off Dream Thief all right. It’s a difficult proposition because Nitz has been running the series episodically and he’s only got one issue to wrap everything up. Most of the previous issues have nothing to do with this one, except their subplots.
You know a comic is good when the writer can introduce an unbelievable amount of characters names in the first three pages and you still love it.
Okay, so the lead doesn’t kill people, he gets possessed by wronged people and they kill people. Nitz wasn’t clear though before. This explanation gets the lead off the hook a little for killing his girlfriend. He was possessed by the guy she’d murdered.
This issue of Dream Thief isn’t just better than the first, Nitz sets a high bar for the series and its ambitions.
I’m not what I’m supposed to think of Dream Thief. Not to spoil too much but the protagonist kills his girlfriend–the day after cheating on her–because she’s just mistakenly killed someone she suspects of breaking into her house and tying her up and threatening to kill her.