The Empty Man 1 (June 2014)

The Empty Man #1There's an air of not-so-quiet desperation about The Empty Man, like writer Cullen Bunn is sitting in the front row of a class with his hand up, practically leaping out of his seat, trying to get the attention of the great Hollywood gods who can option his new comic and turn it into a TV show.

Only, like most desperate people, he's forgotten to be original and is instead recycling already existing media properties for most of the comic.

There's something of a prologue–or two–before the main characters appear. They're FBI agents and are in a world of dark magic where evil spirits (or one) roam the real world. They have terrible chemistry too. Bunn tries too hard with everything, ending on a weak hard cliffhanger.

Vanesa R. Del Rey has a distinct style and I love she modeled one character on Clark Gable. But it's far from enough.

C 

CREDITS

Writer, Cullen Bunn; artist, Vanesa R. Del Rey; colorist, Michael Garland; letterer, Ed Dukeshire; editors, Chris Rosa and Eric Harburn; publisher, Boom! Studios.

Hit 1 (September 2013)

Hit 01 revI thought Boom! was a real publisher now and didn’t do unofficial knockoffs of movies. Hit is a comic book “mockbuster” of Gangster Squad. Not sure why it’s coming out so long after the movie did, especially since the movie was a bomb.

It’s a terrible comic book. If I tried really hard, I think I could come up with some okay things to say about artist Vanesa R. Del Rey. At first glance, her art appears to be Edward Hopper-esque, but it doesn’t hold up sequentially. Particularly not when she’s doing dark scenes and there are a lot of them.

As for writer Bryce Carlson… well, if Hit rips off Gangster Squad and that movie rips off James Ellroy… Carlson certainly didn’t go back to Ellroy for actual writing tips. Awful dialogue and lame characterizations. It’s simply dreadful.

I’m shocked and dismayed Boom!’s still publishing stuff like Hit.

CREDITS

Writer, Bryce Carlson; artist, Vanesa R. Del Rey; colorist, Archie Van Buren; letterer, Ed Dukeshire; editor, Eric Harburn; publisher, Boom! Studios.