[Comic Execution] 11/22 – ‘UMBRAL’, ‘ALEX + ADA’, ‘A VOICE IN THE DARK’

I had a pretty horrific nightmare on Wednesday night, after I got home from the comic book shop. I dreamt that I was BACK in the comic book shop, looking for issues of the ongoing series currently being reviewed in this column. Anything would do; ‘Hinterkind’, ‘The Fox’, ‘Pretty Deadly’, ‘Letter 44’, anything… but as I scanned the “New This Week” rack, I found myself in a panic; THERE WAS NOTHING! Not a single ongoing title! Surely, I thought, I wasn’t look closely enough. But my intensified search was for naught; it was as I feared. I had no choice but to resort to picking up three NEW titles to review. Confidently, I once again perused the rack of fresh titles of the day, and the pit in my stomach sank to a depth beyond what I’d ever known. I BEG OF YOU, I screamed silently to the comic book gods, YOU MUST GRANT ME A REPRIEVE, FOR I AM SURELY YOUR MOST LOYAL. But, it seems, the deities were of a cruel humour, and I was left with only the debut issue of A VOICE IN THE DARK to review.

I knew there was only one thing to do. I would have to forsake the vows I swore when the column started and review comics that were on shelves THE PREVIOUS WEEK. My hands began to tremble and I felt weak. Suddenly, my knees gave out and I fell, endlessly, into darkness.

But now it’s Friday morning and I’m glad to say that the books I reviewed are most certainly from this week and NOT, as in my nightmare, seven days behind.

I think.

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A VOICE IN THE DARK #1

Writer: Larime Taylor
Artist: Larime Taylor

Publisher: Top Cow Productions/Minotaur Press
Price: $4

Being the only debut issue on the shelves this week, I had to pick this one up, though I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Which isn’t intended to be a slight against the comic itself, but rather and indicator of how negative my opinion is of the publisher, Top Cow. I have a long and lurid history with Top Cow, who published one of my all time favorite comics, ‘Weapon Zero’, when I was younger. They also, as you might be aware, were the home of the intensely popular ‘Witchblade’, ‘The Darkness’ and ‘Cyber Force’ properties, none of which I had much concern for. My resentment of them spawns primarily from the fact that they’ve rebooted their trashier properties but ignored the somewhat more dignified and infinitely more interesting Weapon Zero, despite the fact that most comic book artists will cite Weapon Zero as Top Cow’s best work. And their incredibly cynical ‘Pilot Season’ program was awful, essentially letting the popularity of a given set of new series determine which continued beyond their one-shot origins, which was determined via votes at Top Cow’s Myspace page. It was as horrendous as it sounds. So, yeah, they don’t market to me and I don’t buy their comics. It’s not the situation I’d want, but whatever.

I’m actually glad I picked this up, because the writing is really incredible. The story takes the ‘slice of life’, female-centric stories that Terry Moore is so well known for and injects an element of surreal horror that’s more black comedy than anything else. While I’m not a huge fan of the former, I’m more than down for the latter and they make a quite enthralling complement. Larime has a confident approach to pacing, putting some faith in his audience to keep up with the persistent pace, characters being introduced just about every other page. Fortunately, Larime’s characters are also just interesting enough to keep them from blurring together, and his knack for ascribing very real attributes to them without entirely falling into stereotypes is commendable. There is a bit of imbalance between the mundane aspects of the protagonist, Zoey’s, life and the macabre drama that drives the core of the plot, which is basically Zoey’s struggle to retain her control over the urge to kill that she keeps secret, even as she unchains that aspect of herself in a DJ booth of the radio station at her new college. When it does rear it’s charmingly vicious head, there’s an ease to the blend of the two that’s more than commendable; rarely do writers strike this well the needed tone to keep both elements seamlessly integrated. I think it says something about Larime that he can so deftly turn the tedium of normalcy into a brilliantly bleak parody of serial killer horror. This issue, though, focuses more on Zoey’s transition to a new environment and keeps the morbid stuff at a low hum, but that appears to mainly be the result of the need for introduction and I suspect that we’ll see more insanity emerge as the series progresses.

What blows my mind about this book is how, for a Top Cow title, eclectic it is. Larime draws from an astounding range of influences in his writing; the dry, upper middle class satire of Wes Anderson; Kevin Smith’s colorful yet moodily down-to-earth dramedy; Daniel Clowe’s grim appraisals of collegiate tedium; Harvey Pekar’s embittered, sociopathic melodrama… It’s a very robust, surprisingly comedic dynamic that says volumes about Larime’s depth and breadth of awareness of indie comics traditionalism, tempered with a dose of bloody-minded intensity culled from the likes of Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis. So yes, the writing is incredible.

The art is the opposite of incredible. It’s utterly mundane. I feel like Larime was trying to evoke the stark realism of ‘Clerks’ but ended up more in the territory of the somberly disconnected ‘A Scanner Darkly’ visuals minus all the surreal sci-fi. There’s just not enough evocative emotion in the faces of his characters, mainly because he doesn’t really ever resort to exaggeration. Everything’s utterly stiff and tedious, the backgrounds lifeless… at this point, I don’t really think it’s necessary to go on eviscerating the art style because there’s actually a reason for the way it looks so plain. Larime, who both writes and illustrates, does everything without the use of his arms, it turns out. Now, I considered not mentioning what a disappointment the visuals were, but I also don’t want to pretend that the book is perfect, for the sake of my readers. But I do want to enter in the fact that what he’s done here is quite astonishing, even considering the possibility that he’s aided by computer modeling/rendering software of some kind.

I’m definitely all for more of A VOICE IN THE DARK. It’s infinitely smarter than most comics out there, without condescending or falling into the trap of deluded pretension. I do think Larime could collaborate with an artist capable of rendering his story in a way that’s both aesthetically pleasing and appropriate to his vision, but I also understand his need to carefully craft the comic as precisely as he wants. Regardless, anyone who appreciates indie comics or black comedy should definitely pick this up

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UMBRAL #1

Writer: Antony Johnston
Artist: Christopher Mitten
Colors: John Rauch

Publisher: Image
Price: $3

So here’s the first “dark fantasy” I’ve picked up from Image Comics. It’s a big moment; I loathe “dark fantasy” in general, mainly because it often doubles as “shallow YA gothic romance” (Lookin’ at you, Vertigo). But I also have a lot of faith in Image Comics, which is why I picked it up. Though, secretly, I did kind of hope it would be as bad as I was worried it would be, giving me the opportunity to shame a publisher I am far too sweet with. Alas, such is not the fate of UMBRAL.

The world of UMBRAL is immediately laid out as a medieval fantasy cliche, complete with magic-wielding royalty isolated from the serfdom that supports them. There’s even (as the author points out) a map of said kingdom, bearing a remarkable resemblance to the UK, crammed full of Game of Thronesian names like Strakhelm and Tidewake. Fortunately, the author seems to be smart enough not to try and immerse the reader in his heady world-building and keeps the focus personal, letting the background details of Prince Arthir’s (really) adventure flesh things out. What surprising is that Johnston boldly sidelines this strategy halfway through the book with a shocking twist even I didn’t see coming and the narrative shifts into something far more grim and intense. The book is called “Umbral”, it seems, for a reason; it’s dark as shadows.  That’s not to say the sense of adventure or wonder disappears but rather that it’s accompanied by the kind of spine-tingling thrill ride one associates with, say, Guillermo Del Toro, Neil Gaiman or John Bellairs. When the body count starts picking up, the pace really kicks into high gear and there’s genuine sense of velocity as the heroine pings from one place (both physically and metaphysically!) to another with very little chance to catch a breath. Unfortunately, this also means that the actual plot points require a bit of finagling to connect, especially given that we’re left in the dark (HAHAHAHA) re: the nature of magic as well as the origin of several items key to the events that unfold. A better writer might have been able to steer the careening narrative in a fashion more conducive to a coherent reading, but Johnston does well enough.

And it’s easy to overlook a problem like that when each page of UMBRAL is packed with the most beautiful fantasy art I’ve ever seen in an Image title, or anywhere else, really. There’s epic landscapes featuring throngs of people and imposing castles that zoom in, panel by panel, on a single character, there’s ornate palace chambers, dizzying castle corridors, nightmarish monsters and surreal dreamland that fluctuate at whim and burst with detail but never quite devolve into silliness or self-indulgence. Which is all well and fine but THEN! Then pair all of that with whimsical character designs (delightfully contrasting the wicked violence), enthusiastically rendered expressions, dynamic action scenes… is there anything Mitten doesn’t excel in? The opening and closing pages alone are worth the price of entry. THEN there’s the colors! Rauch is clearly channeling the lush, dark worlds of Tim Burton but eschews monochromatics for delicious purples, pinks, blues and blacks while bringing forward brightness when needed. The atmosphere is dense and rich thanks to Rauch, adding hugely to the dreamlike feel of it all. But even he knows when to pull back, and moments of lucidity are marked with earthy hues, lulling the reader into a false sense of security.

UMBRAL is everything a gothic fantasy should be. It respects the reader, it’s truly horrifying, it’s bold and epic… it’s everything Gaiman or Del Toro would want in a comic book. And at Image’s incredibly reasonable $3 price tag, even a jaded anti-fantasy jerk like me can’t resist. PS: I’d like to thank Image Comics for putting the colorist and letterer on the cover. That’s a bold move and one I strongly approve of.

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ALEX + ADA #1

Writer: Sarah Vaughn & Jonathan Luna
Artist: Jonathan Luna

Publisher: Image
Price: $3

The Luna brothers are one of those things in comics you’d have a hard time explaining to people. Yes, they’re brothers, yes, they’re both artists as well as writers, and yes they’re both handsome as the devil but, no, they’re not identical twins. While they both seem to be equally talented, they also seem to fall into assigned roles; Joshua, the younger, was responsible primarily for dialogue while Jonathan did the art, at least on their latest collaboration, though this was also the arrangement for most of their most famous work, simply called ‘Girls’. I’d been aware of their work prior to encountering ‘Girls’ but such a title had kept me at bay until curiousity finally had its way and I took a sneak. Which turned into an entire hour of intense reading, of the kind of horror story that even Stephen King would have been a bit worried by. Joshua Luna’s similarly terrifying ‘Whispers’, recently ended, is probably my favorite horror comic of the past decade, so sublime is his knack for unsettling the very core of me. And now Jonathan has unveiled his solo project, collaborating with fellow webcomic artist Sarah Vaughn on the story while handling art himself. Vaughn, who comes from the world of webcomics, comes across in interviews as having a very different aesthetic than what the Luna Brothers have presented in the past, so I didn’t know what to expect from ALEX + ADA.

Frankly, I still don’t know what to expect, even after reading the entire first issue. Our main character, the titular Alex, is a sad wispy ennui of a man with a desk job and wealthy mother who pressures him to “get his pee-pee wet” which is about the funniest line of dialogue in the book. We get to see a day in his boring life, which it turns out is his birthday. We’re introduced to all the major players, none of whom are any more interesting than him. At one point, they make the point of showing us that hey, the future is full of diversity! But not our story! Our story is about a sad white dude who’s still struggling to get over his ex-girlfriend, so his grandma ships him a girl in a box! IT’S A ROBOT! Oh yeah, and there’s some future stuff. I think Sarah and Jonathan could get some tips from Larime Taylor of A VOICE IN THE DARK on how to make “slice of life” actually have some life. That being said, there is some pipe being set here via a very potent new bit of technology that could explode into something genuinely engaging. If that ever happens. Because the pace so far is positively GLACIAL.

Sadly, Jonathan’s art doesn’t fare much better. There’s nothing wrong with his art at all; it’s very competent and his attention to detail is inhumanly precise. But it’s not put to proper use because the vision of the future presented here is purposefully bland beyond belief. In fact, it’s irritatingly blank. It goes from being a sarcastic critique of sterile technoculture to feeling more like an empty excuse to excise any energy from the proceedings. Even the panels themselves are totally static in placement.

But what really nags me about ALEX + ADA is this: the final page of art is followed by a full page with just the words “to be continued.” Then another page of Jonathan and Sarah thanking everyone for their support as well as pimping out their websites/social media. The next page is an advert for Jonathan Luna’s children’s book (which, interestingly, was the first thing he collaborating with Sarah on), followed by a page of advertisements for the rest of the Luna Brothers’ titles, followed by three more pages of ads. Now, 22 pages of comics is certainly fine and the book is still a wonderful $3 but there’s something unsatisfying about that pointless “to be continued” and the following “credits”. It’s a good summary of how this title feels: a waste of space. Nothing about it is remotely desirable, so into the execution chamber it goes.