Spread #1 – Review

By: Justin Jordan (script/creator), Kyle Strahm (art/creator), Felipe Sobreiro (colors) and CRANK! (letters)

The Story: A post-apocalypse nomad finds a baby that could hold the secret to defeating a demonic plague.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): This was a pretty solid first issue.  The post-apocalypse genre is very crowded.  It happens to be one of my favorite genres just because I like to see what storytellers can do when you take away certain rules.  It’s the same thing as telling a story where gravity didn’t exist or where faster-than-light travel was possible: Taking away rules opens new avenues for storytelling.  So, I’ll sample most things post-apocalyptic even if it means I get a healthy dose of crap sometimes.

Spread is pretty solid.  The reasons for the apoclaypse are vague: something about digging too deep and unleashing something nasty and horrible.  Humanity isn’t totally destroyed as we see dead researchers and their crashed plane.  And there are bandits, there are ALWAYS bandits.  But the focus is on a nomad named “No” who wanders the land and is immune to The Spread.

No has a neat look to him.  He looks like a less muscly version of Wolverine in civilian clothes: messy black hair, unshaven, sideburns, Candian wilderness attire, etc.  And we learn quickly that No can handle himself well in a fight when he uses twin hatchets to take down a Spread-possessed researcher.  Along the way, he finds a baby who may be the secret to saving humanity from the Spread, get’s chased by lots of Spread monsters and that’s it.  End of issue #1.  So, we meet the protagonist, his reason for being in the story and learn the basic set-up of this world.  Some comics take 4-5 issues to accomplish that.  Spread #1 pulls you in enough that you’ll be curious to see what happens in issue #2.

Ballistic #2 – Review

By: Adam Egypt Mortimer (writer/creator), Darick Robertson (art/creator), Diego Rodriguez (colors) and Crank! (letters)

The Story: Butch needs to get help for his hung-over, sentient gun.

Review (with SPOILERS): The first issue of this series really caught me by surprise.  I get relatively few of my comics in paper form anymore, but am still an active reader of Previews and a pre-orderer.  So, I usually know precisely what comics will be handed to me when I visit the comic shop on Wednesdays.  Ballistic #1 caught me by surprise.  I’d forgotten it was coming out and didn’t have any expectations going into the first issue.  What I got was this incredibly rich world full of sentient devices, bad stereotype Asian villains and a demonic gun that uses recreational drugs.  It was big, beautiful and zany.  I loved it.

I suspected that this issue might not be as special merely because I now had expectations.  However, The Mortimer/Robertson team has kept the awesome rolling again.  I’m confident that this will be an awesome little series.

Every few pages there is some cool concept introduced or some visual image that just seizes you and forces you to pay attention.  We start with a cool introduction to what has gone wrong in this future world: How it all crashed before being saved by this organic technology lead to sentient guns, flying cars with dragon wings and walls that just open up to allow maintenance.  All of these crash scenarios are cool and could merit their own series just based on the concept: Flesh-eating acid rain, AIDS robots, weaponized contagious rage blackouts, giant mosquitos…  We get nothing more than a panel of each and then are rushed along to the story.  It reminds me of visiting a zoo and you’re enjoying looking at the gorillas and then someone makes you go along because the lions are being fed live meat and then they yank you along again to watch monkeys knife-fighting.

Ballistic #1 – Review

By: Adam Egypt Mortimer (writer/story), Darick Robertson (art/story), Diego Rodriguez (colors) and Crank! (letters)

The Story: An air conditioner repairman and his sentient pistol get into trouble with the Korean mafia.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): Geez… This comic really scratched that itch that demands something “different” in your comics.  I really loved it and recommend you seek it out.  If I had to give it a music comparison, it would be kinda like you were calming listening to soft jazz (i.e. other comics this week) and one of your friends snuck up, switched your music to old, British punk rock and jacked the volume all the way up… It certainly makes you sit up in your chair and pay attention.

This was actually a hard review to write because what makes the comic nifty are all cool visuals and concepts.  The first couple of drafts of the review descended into “and then he got into his car…..and it had demonic wings that matched the candy-apple red pain of his 50’s Chevy coupe…..and then his gun shot fire everywhere and then…”  I hate those types of reviews, but it’s an issue that functions at that crazy-stuff, overload level, so it is hard to avoid the “and then…” aspect.

The story is set in a near future Korea where all the technology is at least somewhat demonic/organic.  I mentioned the protagonist’s winged car, but this organic theme goes everywhere.  In fact, the protagonist is an air conditioner repairman and to fix the AC, he has to do things like convince an organic wall to open an orifice, then he plunges in his arm and rummages around in the guts of the beast until he finds the part/organ that isn’t working.  If you read and enjoyed Orc Stain, this comic has that same type of feel where all the devices are alive.  The setting feels like something that could have happened on the other side of the world from the Transmetropolitan characters.  I can almost imagine Spider Jerusalem saying, “I’d never go to Korea where they have all those f*****-up demon cars….”

But, the most interesting object in the story is the protagonist’s gun.  See, even though he is an AC repairman, he’s a wanna-be hustler.  So, he is always afoul of techno Korean gangsters and owes money to all the wrong people. Hence, he carries this awesome, sentient demonic pistol.  When he shoots the gun, it wraps it’s tail around his forearm and sucks adrenalin from his blood stream; the more excited the protagonist is, the more the gun can shoot.  And the gun is funny, with its dialog is all loud and crude.  Love it…

End Times of Bran and Ben #1 – Review

By: James Asmus & Jim Festante (writers, co-creators), Rem Broo (pencils & co-creators), Overdrive Studio (colors) & Crank! (letters)

The Story: The Rapture happens and all the fun people are left behind….

Quick Review (with a few little SPOILERS): This is a clever little comic.  It isn’t going to win any Eisner’s or displace Watchmen on Time Magazine’s next list of influential works of fiction, but it is fresh, original, irreverent and funny.  There’s certainly a place for this kind of comic in today’s market.

The basic story is that Ben and Bram are 20-something roommates.  Bram is kinda a mess and Ben is a little more uptight.  Early in the comic, Ben chastises Bram for saying that he was going to the grocery store, but only coming home with condoms and coffee ice cream.  But, as Bram explains, last week all Bram used was condoms, coffee and ice cream, and he only had enough money for two items.  Thus, condoms and coffee ice cream.  Very economical!

Hack/Slash #12 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Carlos Badilla (colors), Crank! (letters) and James Lowder (edits)

The Story: The Hack/Slash crew goes to South America, searching for a cure to the disease that causes slashers.

Four Things:

1. Funny. – This is a comic for people who like jokes about bodily functions.  If you roll your eyes at that kind of humor, I’m not sure that Hack/Slash is the book for you.  But if you’re one of “us”, there are some great moments in this comic.  The humor is in small places and a lot of it comes from timing, which is a hard thing to have in a comic.  For example, at one point, after landing on this monster island, Cassie goes into the bushes to go to the bathroom and gets attacked by water zombies.  Since they’ve been in the water, they’re soft and they pop when she hits them.  Soon she is covered in green blood and guts.  When she comes back to the group, one of the others says, “Whoa! You really had to go!”  I mean….that’s funny.  Then I giggled again when I realized that the name of the motion picture studio that shoots films on monster island is “Monster Bait” studios.  Heh.

2. Whacky ideas all over the place. – Not only is it a funny comic, but it’s kind of an idea-a-minute issue.  There’s the nature of the monster island and how it relates to those awful 50’s era monster films.  There are attacks by about 10 different types of weird monsters.  There’s a possible link to Nazi science.  I dunno why the mysteries of Nazi science are still so fascinating, but they are.  There’s also a possible link to the slasher disease.  It’s all good stuff.

Hack/Slash #6 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (artist), Mark Englert (colorist), Crank! (letterer) & James Lowder (edits)

The Story: Hack/Slash gets back to some of its early roots with a story involving musicians & the hellish dimension of Nef.

What’s Good: This issue really had all the calling cards of a classically good Hack/Slash.  If you go back to the beginning of the series, there was involvement of the demonic realm of Nef with the slasher killers inhabiting the Hack/Slash universe and it’s fun to see the series going back to that.  That’s especially true because Seeley is doing it in such a way that is very new reader friendly.  So, if you’ve been lingering on the fence, this isn’t a bad jumping on point.

But, what sets Hack/Slash apart from the rest of the horror comics genre is its sense of humor.  This is a really funny comic and credit for that really should be shared by both Seeley and Leister.  The folks who get killed in this album are so annoying that you’re kinda happy when they get it.  One is some kinda shallow pop starlet with some made-up name and a massive following after one album and the other victims are stand-ins for the stars of the Jersey Shore.  I mean, who doesn’t enjoy seeing the slashers get those kinds of people.  Were this a horror movie, the audience would cheer when they die.  However, it isn’t all laughs because the killer really is scary so we’ve got something to laugh at and something to be frightful of at the same time.

There’s also two GREAT scenes with Pooch (the demonic Nef-beast turned good).  I’d like to say that we can never get enough Pooch, but that’s probably not true.  Part of Pooch’s charm is that he flashes through the comic for a few panels, cracks us up with his juxtaposition of earnest attitude and demonic appearance and then is gone.  Pooch always leaves us wanting more.

Hack/Slash #5 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Kyle Strahm (art), Mark Englert & Nate Lovett (colors), Crank! (letters) & James Lowder (edits)

The Story: Cassie & Vlad run into Fantomah, protector of the Jungle,  in this done-in-one story.

What’s Good: Ya know, sometimes it is nice to have a comic that stands on its own and isn’t part of a 4-6 issue story arc.  It almost doesn’t matter whether the story is good, bad or just kinda “blah” because it changes up the pacing of the series and keeps future stories from being so predictable. This done-in-one story features the “Return of Fantomah” who must have been a character from one of the latter Hack/Slash stories at Devil’s Due Publishing that I haven’t read yet (all on my iPad, just no time…), but no prior experience is necessary because Seeley and Strahm give us a really nice little intro to who she is with a ~5 page intro.  The cool intro is written and illustrated in a very 60’s manner that shows us how Fantomah is some supernatural protector of the rainforest.  Then we cut forward in time to the present day and see Fantomah have a quick adventure with Cassie and Vlad revolving around Cassie’s ongoing desire to rid the world of the Black Lamps.  Not everything is what is originally seems and the pacing of the twists and reveals is really nicely done.

We get an art change for this issue too.  It is probably unfair to do this, but comparing Strahm’s art to regular series artist Daniel Leister’s, you’ll see that Strahm’s art is (mostly) much coarser.  You can see a lot of Chaykin influences and he has that interesting combo of some characters looking rough and scratchy combined with his women looking soft and curvy.  It’s a nice change.  And, the aforementioned intro section of the comic is really great.

Hack/Slash #4 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Mark Englert (colors), Crank! (letters) & James Lowder (edits)

The Story: The first story of Tim Seeley’s new volume of Hack/Slash (since it found a new home at Image) comes to a close.

What’s Good: This was a really good issue and you could tell that Tim Seeley was saving some fun bits for this issue.  This will get a little spoiler-y, but I think it’s warranted because it is fun things like this that give Hack/Slash its soul.  First, we have the fact that Cassie has to snap her monstrous sidekick Vlad out of his mind-controlled state so he can help her fight the acid lady (sorry, forgot her name).  Long time readers know that Vlad’s cluelessness about sex, but increasing interest therein, has been a running joke in this series.  So, it was very funny to see Cassie pull up her shirt and plant Vlad’s face right in her bosom.  Sure, enough….he wakes up and joins the fight, but it creates an awkward moment for the two friends.

Next we have a scene where the rest of H/S, Inc. are fighting off zombified animals.  Among the animals are some zombie cats and they get rid of them my having Pooch distract them with a laser-pointer (that he’s holding in this mouth) while someone else shoots them.  Awesome!

But, the best moment is that Cassie and Vlad have their big battle with the acid lady in the Intelligent Design Museum.  Clearly the battle had to happen somewhere, but rather than having it in some parking lot or generic old house, placing the battle in this museum allows the creators to have all kinds of fun with the types of exhibits in such a place (like seeing humans trying to feed a watermelon to a vegetarian T. Rex).  That’s just good stuff!

I’ve been a little hard on the art in Hack/Slash, but it was a lot better this month and I think I know why.  Hack/Slash is probably a very hard comic to draw well.  Beyond the fact that there are a ton of different character types (skinny guys, hulking guys, sexy girls, zombies, etc.), those characters are always doing really dynamic things and it is very hard to maintain that sense of  energy.  That type of problem is going to be most noticeable on full-body panels of two characters fighting.  But, this issue has almost NO full-body panels; many are waist-up or just faces and hands.  And, at that level, the artwork still carries plenty of energy to make us feel the action.  Whether this was an adjustment by the creators or not, I really liked this art a LOT more than the past couple issues (which weren’t “bad”….they just needed a little more umph).

Hack Slash #3 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Mark Englert (colors), Crank (letters) & James Lowder (edits)

The Story: Bobby Brunswick is back with an axe to grind against an ex-girlfriend and is using his “reanimate dead animal” powers to their fullest.

What’s Good: There’s lots of typical fun Hack/Slash action in this comic and that means it’s a lot of fun.  One of the villains in this arc is Bobby Brunswick, who old time Hack/Slash readers will remember as the veterinary assistant who had a huge crush on his boss, Lisa Elsten (the town vet and Chris Krank’s current girlfriend).  Lisa’s boyfriend at the time didn’t like this very much and in a prank-gone-wrong, Bobby was killed before coming back to exact revenge and exhibiting this ability to reanimate dead animals.

So, this issue has scads of zombified animals everywhere.  There are crows spying on pregnant Lisa through the window, zombie deer playing kamikaze with the sheriff’s patrol car, and zombie fish and an effing zombie snapping turtle trying to bite people in the river.  It’s both intense and funny all at the same time and that’s before we even get to the scenes of Bobby going after pregnant Lisa and the requisite Pooch humor (he gets locked in his cage for sniffing Lisa’s butt because “he wants to know what she ate for dinner”).

Summing up, this issue is just a lot of fun as Seeley keeps the action rolling and tosses in humor here and there.  If you like a silly take on slasher movies, you’ll love this series.

Hack/Slash #1 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Mark Englert (colors), Crank (letters) & James Lowder (editor)

The Story: Cassie, Vlad and gang are back!

What’s Good: Tim Seeley does a great job of making this issue “new reader friendly” but without making his loyal readers feel like they’ve gone back to kindergarten.  He pulls this off by giving us 2-pages of character synopsis (picture + 1 paragraph) for the major characters and then just having the characters do a little more exposition than is normal.  All comic readers know that Seeley is walking a tightrope with this type of issue, but he nails it.  New readers and old readers alike are going to love this.

If you’ve never ventured into the world of Hack/Slash, you should really check it out if you’re at all fond of 80’s slasher/horror movies.  The main character is a young woman named Cassie Hack who, along with her monstrous sidekick Vlad, hunts and kills slashers.  There is a lot of other goodness buried in the ~40 previous issues of Hack/Slash, but that’s the basic story: hunting and killing slashers in bloody ways and never being afraid to have the ladies wear revealing clothing.  This issue has plenty of those staples as well as tons of comic relief courtesy of Vlad and his hopelessly naive sensibilities about women and the world.  Toss in the fact that this creator-owned comic is doesn’t chase its own tail like Marvel/DC superhero comics and you have a winner.

This particular adventure is a classic as Cassie and Vlad are after a lover’s lane killer who isn’t all he/she seems.  Plus, while we’re getting our arms around that pretty straight forward story, Seeley gets us up to speed slowly on everything else that is going on with the supporting characters.  Bravo.

Daniel Leister’s art does what it needs to do.  He draws a couple of horribly bloody scenes (with a strong assist from the colorist) and a couple of other really screwed up panels (one of the killers victims is half-dissolved in a hot tub of acid or lye or something).  And he also draws the pretty ladies really well.  That’s kinda what it takes to be the artist on Hack/Slash.  It isn’t JH Williams, III type art, but it isn’t trying to be and nor should it be.

Hack/Slash: Me Without You #1 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Mark Englert (colors), Crank! (letters) & James Lowder (edits)

The Story: Where did Vlad (Cassie Hack’s hulking companion) come from?

What’s Good: I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that all Hack/Slash fans love Vlad.  To me, Vlad has become the heart of the overall series with his tireless efforts to stand by Cassie through thick and thin, protecting her from danger, keeping her sane and (of course) helping her to kill bad guys.

Before now, we really didn’t know where Vlad came from, but we did know that he wasn’t a garden-variety human being.  The origin that Tim Seeley gives him fits perfectly with the Hack/Slash universe and sets-up a whole raft of future story angles.  I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Vlad’s past coming into the pages of Hack/Slash once the ongoing series from gets ramped back up at Image in the next month or so.

All of the things that make Vlad such a great character are on full display here.  We get to see how he remains a kind an optimistic character despite the incredible sadness of his life and his protective nature also shines through as he dotes on a young lady who is in trouble.  And, of course, there are a few trademark Vlad bits of humor.  For example, at one point where his charge says she’ll be his friend, but he has to follow her around all the time, stay out of site and not bother her.  She concludes, “That doesn’t sound like too shitty of a deal, does it?”  To which Vlad replies, “No! It sounds like a fair amount of shit.”  I LOVE those little naive bits from Vlad

Daniel Leister’s art is very effective for this series.  He can do gory (as we see on the first page).  He can draw attractive women.  He can emphasize monstrous nature.  But what I think I like best about Leister is that he varies his panels and his layout quite a bit.

Hack / Slash Annual 2010: Murder Messiah – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Jethro Morales (art), Mark Englert (colors) & Crank! (letters)

The Story: A proper introduction to the Hack/Slash universe (since the property moved to Image in Summer 2010) with two stories.  In one, Cassie Hack deals with a serial killer who it hitting close to home and in the future, we see a possible apocalyptic wasteland dominated by slashers.

What’s Good: Too much is made of “jumping on points” in modern comics.  The recently completed Hack/Slash: My First Maniac was such a jumping on point in that it didn’t make any demand that you had read any prior issues of Hack/Slash.  It was a LOT of fun, but at the same time, it probably didn’t do a whole lot for long-time Hack/Slash fans.    Well, this Murder Messiah Annual is not a classic “jumping on point”.  Mr. Seeley is flinging you right into the deep end of the pool and making you very aware that he’s already written 50+ issues in this universe.  If you haven’t read Hack/Slash before, you will understand a lot of what is going on, but you will also be a little confused.

Wait, why is this a good thing?  Well, don’t you hate it when you’ve been reading a title for 2-3 years and suddenly the creators decide they need to create a “new jumping on point” to make the series accessible for new readers?  When that happens, existing readers are forced to sit through a boring 6-issue arc that just chases its tail from a story point of view.  This stuff is why characters in mainstream superhero comics haven’t changed in 30+ years.  If this Annual represents the most Mr. Seeley is going to slow the car to allow folks to jump on, you know that you are not going to feel shat upon in 12 months when we have to have another “new jumping on point” (and again in 12 months after that).  So, don’t be a baby… Grab on and catch up as we go along or go find the back issues which are readily available in collected editions or digitally.

Hack/Slash: My First Maniac #4 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Mark Englert (colors) & Crank (letters)

The Story: This Cassie Hack “Year One” miniseries wraps up.  How will Cassie deal with Grinface?

What’s Good: This series did exactly what it set out to do by reintroducing Hack/Slash to its new audience that it gained with its move to Image, while staying true to the issues that Tim Seeley published through Devils Due Publishing.

For a final issue, I thought this issue hit all the right notes as it shows how Cassie is both vulnerable (as a misfit teenage girl) and tough (as a avenging killer of slashers) and it is that balancing act that makes this series such a joy to read (as I’ve been catching up on the series on my iPhone).  If you’re a fan of 80’s slasher movies, there is just a LOT to love here as the bad guy (Grinface) and setting (abandoned barn next to a corn field) could have appeared in any of the horror movies I watched as a kid.

I’d love to see one of Seeley’s scripts because I think there must be constant notes that say, “Lots of blood”.  Good lord is there a lot of blood sloshing around in this as people are hit with hammers (big and small), hit by cars, etc. and it might be excessive if this comic weren’t a loving spoof of those ultra-bloody movies.  Otherwise, the art does a very good job of selling the story.

Hack/Slash: My First Maniac #1 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Mark Englert (colors) & Crank (letters)

The Story: As Hack/Slash moves from Devils Due publishers over to Image, we are treated to a fresh jumping on point that explains the origins of Cassandra Hack and why she’s out to kill serial killers.

What’s Good: Hack/Slash is not a new title by any stretch, but when you move from Devils Due to Image, you are going to get a flood of new readers because a lot of LCSs will stock a few issues of Image titles, but won’t touch anything from Devils Due out of fear that they won’t sell.  So, it makes sense that creator Tim Seeley would give us a nice jumping on point for the world of Cassandra Hack now that he’s got a few more eyeballs on the title.

The concept of Hack/Slash isn’t that complicated: Cassandra Hack is teenage girl who hunts and kills serial killers.  That’s basically it.  I haven’t read all the prior issues of Hack/Slash, but it has become a favorite of mine on the iPhone when I have idle minutes in the various waiting rooms of the world.  You really don’t need any prior knowledge to hop on and figure out what is going on in this comic.  It is a very good intro to who Cassandra is.  I think she’s like a teenage girl version of Bruce Wayne, but without the money or compunctions about killing the bad guys.  She’s grim, ruthless and not about to let emotional attachments stand in the way of getting the bad guys.

I think the art goes a long way to selling a book like this.  It is appropriately colorful and descriptive, yet creepy.  I also really enjoy that it isn’t all photo-reference.   Leister doesn’t shy away from showing the blood and guts and he certainly knows how to draw a pretty woman (and how much fun is a horror book without pretty girls?).