Deadlands: Death Was Silent – One-Shot – Advanced Review

Death Was Silent By: Ron Marz (writer and editor), Bart Sears (artist), Michael Atiyeh (colors)

Backup Dime Novel “Prey” By: C. Edward Sellner (writer and colorist), Alejandro Aragon (artist)

The Story: Lead (Death Was Silent): A bounty hunter with an odd way of talking drifts into town on a rainy night and he isn’t here for the company.

Backup (Prey): Billy the Kid’s latest installment in the weird western world of the Deadlands.

What’s Good: Ron Marz delivers a high concept weird western. Why high concept? Four words: weird western black ops. Marz makes good use of the conventions of the weird western genre, which are themselves built of the classic tropes of the western and dark fantasy genres. The western excels at the outsider bringing law to a town on the frontier, where he is friendless, outgunned, disrespected and despised. The tone was set perfectly in the opening sequence as our hero rides into town under sheets of rain, when a kid comes up to him and says, “Hey mister, you kill that guy?” This nods to the western genre and misdirects at the same time. Beautiful. And the dialogue throughout is terse and tight with tension.

Bart Sears and Michael Atiyeh on art were excellent. I’d last seen Sears’ work on Justice League International and some Crossgen titles. Here, it is totally different, more subdued and gritty, less self-aware. It reminds me a bit of the European styles used in their western comics. It does not try to be beautiful, because its subjects certainly are not. This fits the gross, dirty and corrupt town of this story. Sears’ action sequences are cool and I was sold on the art right in the opening sequence and the ride into town under the rain.

My Name Is Bruce – One Shot – Review

By Milton Freewater Jr (writer), Cliff Richards (pencils), Michelle Madsen (colors), Michael David Thomas (letters), Bart Sears and Francisco Ruiz Velasco (covers)

To anyone trying to avoid spoilers for this movie don’t get this comic. It’s not a bad story, it just tells the movie’s plot. I was expecting more of a prequel, but from what I’ve seen of the trailers this book tells the short-short version. Still, it’s got me excited for the movie. I’m hoping the film’s writing to be funnier, but I feel that Bruce Campbell’s performance will handle that.

Milton Freewater’s writing keeps up a pretty frantic pace throughout. I don’t know who decided to adapt a film into a one shot, but 32 pages isn’t enough to cut it. That said, Freewater does the absolute best he can with so little room. Characters suffer the most since there isn’t room to develop them, but the story itself feels complete with a clear beginning and end. The problem with the lack of character development, however, is nothing really hits the mark. Bruce gets no introduction so the idea of him being a prick and transforming into a hero doesn’t fly. It’s also hard to get a real sense of the stakes with the story moving so fast. It’s all climax, little setup and less character. Will the demon kill everyone? Who cares, I don’t know anyone’s name – just Bruce Campbell’s.

From cover to cover Cliff Richards’ art looks lazy. Since the demon is the only character that gets more than four lines of detail the rest of the book looks slapped together. Granted, the demon is the most interesting visual element. But it’s no excuse for such a drastic drop-off in pencil quality for everything else. The backgrounds are weak, and the remaining characters look too similar. Some would argue that the lack of detail could be attributed to the action taking place. With everyone running and dying, the less detail would show the speed of the action. I don’t buy it, and neither should you.

I feel a prelude or non-direct tie-in would’ve been a better way to go for this book. It’s pretty clear that it wasn’t a priority for everyone involved. Since that’s the case, why spend your money on it? (Grade D-)

-Ben Berger