Lovable. Star-Spangled War Stories and G.I. Zombie are lovable. I’m not sure if it’s what Gray and Palmiotti intend–I assume so, since they go out of their way to make the comic read like a familiar, pleasantly inventive amusement. It’s the genial procedural of comic books.
None of the details really matter–it doesn’t matter that G.I. Zombie works for the feds and isn’t a private eye–because Gray and Palmiotti just have to string together the little scenes. The great moments of the comic where the benefit of an undead hero comes in handy. There’s even time for him to catch up with an old–human–friend this issue.
It’s awesome, start to finish. Gray and Palmiotti have found something special with this approach, because it’s not a horror comic and it’s not an action comic, but it borrows from both.
And Hampton’s art looks absolutely fantastic.
A
CREDITS
Door-To-Door Delivery; writers, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray; artist and colorist, Scott Hampton; letterer, Rob Leigh; editors, David Piña and Joey Cavalieri; publisher, DC Comics.
Okay, so G.I. Zombie is kind of lame when he’s on his own. Not the comic, but the character. When he’s running around this issue, talking to himself, it’s really lame. If Gray and Palmiotti want to have some reason he speaks to himself in expository dialogue, they should introduce it. His origin is still in question… if he’s a motormouth, so be it. But establish it.
I still don’t know why I like Star Spangled War Stories so much. Maybe it’s because of Gray and Palmiotti’s pace. This comic–featuring the cast of “Duck Dynasty” unleashing a zombie plague on the United States (the rural United States)–moves at a breakneck pace. About the only time it calms down for a moment is when G.I. Zombie’s partner, whose name I don’t remember, stops at a diner and there’s character development between her and a domestic terrorist whose organization she’s infiltrated.
The last issue reveals Wool doesn’t just have a pacing problem or a perspective problem, it has a scale problem. Palmiotti and Gray never make the silo society seem real enough. They never show the silo in a way to make one believe anyone besides the cast lives there.
Wool is a frustrating comic. Presumably to stick with the narrative structure of the source novel, Gray and Palmiotti constantly waste time and pass up opportunities for a better structure.
The issue starts with the protagonist narrating. The fourth issue and Gray and Palmiotti have finally settled on having the protagonist. And on having her narrate. Only she doesn’t narrate for long and the focus soon shifts back to the subplots.
It’s almost like Wool, the comic book, is meant to inspire the reader to instead go read Wool, the novel, in order to understand the character motivations. Because Gray and Palmiotti try for intense scenes, montage sequences, all sorts of things they can’t get done because they haven’t set up the characters well.
It can’t really be so obvious, can it? So much of Wool’s cast not seeming to be able to see what’s going on has to do with them being simple silo folk, used to living a certain way and absolutely unable to see the obvious. Like poisoned water.
Wool opens with one protagonist, then moves on to another, then promises a third. It’s a novel adaptation, which might have handled the transitions smoother, but writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti are a tad abrupt. They do well establishing the setting–a post-apocalyptic future where everyone lives in a huge silo underground and can’t go outside–but the characters and their relationships are confusing.
I’m a little shocked, though maybe I shouldn’t be. For their “Futures End” tie-in with G.I. Zombie, Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti tell the last G.I. Zombie story. Maybe all the “Futures End” are the last issues in imaginarily long series (I don’t think I’ll find out). But what they do here works out.