The Field #1 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/letters), Simon Roy (art) and Simon Cough (colors)

The Story: A man wakes up in a Field and gets into the wrong passing car.

Review (with SPOILERS): This is a play on a classic hitchhiker story.  We quickly meet a man who wakes up naked in a field and can’t even remember his name, but he has his phone and immediately starts receiving ominous text messages like, “Watch out!  They’re after you.”  It’s a little like that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus tries to help Neo escape the Agents by giving him instructions on the cell phone.  Eventually, the guy doesn’t follow the instructions, gets into a strange car and ends up on the worst car-ride/road-trip EVER.

Basically, the guy he rides with is NUTS, drug-addicted, violent, random…..  Nice one second, shooting up a restaurant the next.  The whole thing is supposed to make you uncomfortable and it accomplishes that mission very nicely.  The antagonist, Christian, reminds me of every bad hitchhiker cliche, and since our protagonist has amnesia, he has little choice but to follow along with the dude even if it is against his better judgement.

On the positive side, this comic is a good illustration of how panels can be constructed to create a sense of unease.  Zoom in, zoom out, perspective changes galore… I’m sure there is a solid visual theory that they teach in art school about how to make the audience/reader feel unsettled; I don’t know how to explain it, but Simon Roy is all over it in this issue.  Very solid job.

Sheltered #7 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/creator/letters), Johnnie Christmas (art/creator), Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Things are coming apart at the seams as the murderous kids have to deal with outside intervention.

The Review (with SPOILERS): This was another really strong issue for this series.  It starts out kinda slow, but about 2/3 through the issue, it “gets real” when the remaining adult from the last issue is forced to kill one of the murderous little kids as they’re chasing him through the woods.

What I liked about the scene (and the series) is how unflinching it is.  The creators do perform the proper set-up for this fleeing adult: He has seen his friends murdered, he’s running through the snowy woods in the middle of the night (in the middle of nowhere), he’s been shot in the leg, and he STILL has three kids with guns chasing him.  So, the comic does go to great lengths to demonstrate that he really has no choice but to fight back and they demonstrate his remorse afterwards – even though he knew he had no choice.  But, the way they depict the shooting of a kid is pretty blunt.

The whole scene is surreal.  One moment they’re just kids running through the woods after an adult; they are KIDS and don’t really understand life and death and consequences.  They’re chasing the adult just because that’s what the other kids are doing.  The next moment one of these kids is shot through the chest- dying – and the other kids really don’t know what to do.  Their only prior experience with injury has been when friends skin their knees and you call for a parent, except they cannot do that because they killed all the parents.  Now they’re just kids lost in the forest who need help….but can’t get any help.

Sheltered #6 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/letters), Johnnie Christmas (art), Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Adults from the outside world appear at the secluded compound.

Review (with SPOILERS): This was a pretty solid issue.  It does a lot of things well, but has some problems that we’ll get to in a minute.

On the good side of the ledger, we get to see a fully fleshed-out backstory on the adults who had arrived at the compound at the end of issue #5.  If you’ll remember, at the end of that issue, a truck with adults showed up to disturb Lucas’ little Children of the Corn scene.  It was a really good cliffhanger because we didn’t know how it would affect Lucas’ plans.  Were these armed thugs showing up?  Other preppers?  Family members of some of the parents who Lucas had killed?

Well, it turns out that this guy is nothing but a dude delivering some second hand solar panels to the compound to make a few bucks.  Where I thought this issue was effective was in just how well it illustrated this delivery guy’s situation.  I mean, he’s hustling and scrambling to act as a kinda sales agent for used solar panels!  They’re not even his solar panels.  He isn’t like an entrepreneur who is in the solar panel business; he’s just a guy who knows where there might be some quality used panels and if you give him some money, he’ll track them down for you.  Then through this whole unfortunate sequence of events, he ends up having to deliver the panels himself to make any money on the deal.  It’s a really effective demonstration of how a man can end up with no career, no skills, no capital and be forced to desperately scramble to make money for his family.  The flip side is that it shows the type of trouble you can get yourself into when you’re THAT extended and have to make marginal choices.  Stay in school, kids!

See, if you deliver enough used solar panels to survivalist groups in remote Montana, eventually you’ll roll that natural 20 and hit the nutball group that robs you, takes your stuff, turns out to be a cult, etc.  This guy is just unlucky that he rolled the natural 20 on his first visit and now he’s in deep doo-doo.  He seems like a nice guy – family and all that – but now he’s walked into Lucas’ nuthouse and he’ll have to pay the price.  What’s ironic is that this guy was probably on the phone with his wife 30 minutes earlier saying, “I’m almost done with this trip.  It took 8 hours to drive here, but I just have to drop off the panels and leave.”  He was probably already planning what he would do with the money.  Little did he know that what he perceived as the END of his adventure was really just the BEGINNING.

Sheltered #5 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (creator/writer/letters), Johnnie Christmas (creator/illustrator) and Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Lucas continues to tighten his grip on the children, but the outside world may show up and cause problems.

Review (with SPOILERS): This is a really strong series. I can’t believe that it isn’t getting a little more chatter because it’s almost everything that I want a “pre-apocalypse” story to be.  Seriously, check the series out.  It’s even a $2.99 book and the trade is coming out in the next month or so.

One great thing about Sheltered is how rapidly it rips through the story.  We’re only on the fifth issue and so much has already happened.  We saw the kids kill their parents.  We saw the two girls suspect that something fishy was going on and end up getting locked in the underground bunker.  We’ve seen Lucas (the leader) start to exhibit all sorts of creepy “cult leader” vibes.  We’ve seen Lucas start to murder other kids who dissent.  All in the first four issues!

Thematically, Sheltered shares some DNA with a series like The Walking Dead.  Sure….there are no zombies in Sheltered, but the basic stories are similar.  TWD has (unfortunately) settled into a really slow storytelling tempo where storylines drag along for a year or more.  Even though TWD can still bring the noise once or twice per year, I honestly prefer the faster paced tempo of a story like Sheltered.  I guess there is a concern about “running out of story”, but these sorts of post-apocalyptic tales can really run forever if the writers are clever.  Just keep changing the setting and giving the characters new events to react to.

Secret Avengers #11 – Review

by Ed Brisson (Writer), Luke Ross (Artist), Matthew Wilson (Colorist)

The Story: A new inhuman has arrived on the scene! It’s a pity he’s hostile to S.H.I.E.L.D. agents though.

The Review: The latest issue of this series was kind of a letdown, with a replacement writer trying to tie-in to the larger Infinity event. Bringing a new character with him, Ed Brisson had the unenviable task of trying to set up the biggest spy agency in this rather colossal event, tying many of its events into its narrative while telling a story. It was, however, a story in two parts, with this issue being the conclusion. Does he actually fares better this time around, though?

In some ways, Brisson does keep around some of the elements that he made work in the previous issue, with Sarah Garza still retaining her great approach at getting superpowers and being thrown in a situation of high stress. The way she sees things and how she tries her best, yet cannot seem to fathom how she should do things is something that shows good characterization.

Not all characters are written as well, though, with Phil Coulson coming of as rather boring with the low amount of dialogue he has and Marcus Johnson who comes off as a poor planner and a bit stiff in terms of characterization. The way Brisson handles Maria Hill is not half-bad, though, showing her more angry and stressed-out scene, which does help in setting the dire situation the world is in right now.

Secret Avengers #10 – Review

by Ed Brisson (Writer), Luke Ross (Artist), Matthew Wilson (Colorist)

The Story: There’s a new recruits for field work at S.H.I.E.L.D. and she’s one of the new inhumans. It’s a pity for her that Infinity is still going on…

The Review: It’s not necessarily the fairest or most positive thing to say, but there is a reason why most people hate even tie-ins. Shoehorning elements or characters important to the main book, stopping the natural narrative flow for elements that will be untouched further along and many more are possible reasons for the general dislike those issues receive. There are some rare cases where it can produce something of quality, like when Jason Aaron took on Black Panther during Secret Invasion, yet those are few and far between.

This is one of those issues, as regular writer Nick Spencer is replaced by Ed Brisson in order to show readers what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing during Thanos invasion in Infinity. Set right after the terrigenesis, this shows how a young agent gets turned into an inhuman and then gets sent to the field right away. While this concept could actually give way for a satisfying story, this issue doesn’t really use it very well as it rushes along.

Sheltered #4 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/letters), Johnnie Christmas (art) and Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Lukas starts to deal with dissenters in his group.

Review (with SPOILERS): This is a pretty good series.  If you haven’t been following it, the basic set-up is that we’re introduced to a group of families preparing for the Shit hits the fan moment.  You know…Preppers…  These families have bought land in the middle of nowhere in rural Montana/Idaho and are preparing for the worst: building shelters, stockpiling food, guns, etc.  The first issue shows the children of the preppers turn on their parents and murder them.  Since then we’ve watched as the kids consolidate under the leadership of a teenager named Lukas.

I originally thought this might be a comic series about the dangers of prepping.  I mean, if your children grow up hearing you talking about the apocalypse and see you stockpiling weapons and survival supplies, that might warp them a bit; maybe as the adults are seeing the federal government as a threat to their liberty, the children start to see their parents in the same light.  But, Sheltered really hasn’t turned out that way at all.

Change #1 – Review

By: Ales Kot (writer), Morgan Jeske (art), Sloane Leong and Ed Brisson

The Story: I’m honestly not sure….

Quick review: This just isn’t a comic for me.  I know that there are people who like this sort of story and I know that I should just agree to disagree with those people.   But deep inside I wonder what the hell is wrong with people who enjoy these oblique and impenetrable stories.

The beginning of the end (for me) happened early in this comic where we have a lovely splash-page showing a cityscape and narration boxes that say, “This is a tale of beginnings and ends, and all that lies between.  This is a tale of becoming, for forgiveness, or moving on.  This is a tale of me…and you.”  Ugh.  I just can’t abide this type of storytelling.  I could write 1000 words about how weak it is to warn us that you’re about to tell a seriously deep story and that we need to pay attention or else we’ll miss it.  I don’t have a problem with deep stories or stories that make you “work for it”, but I DO have a problem with writers who feel the need to announce the impending deepness with flourishes of jiber-jaber language.  Get over yourself and just tell the damn story…

Comeback #1 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer and letters), Michael Walsh (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: In the near future, an agency exists that can go back in time and save loved ones before they die in accidents, etc.

Quick Review: This is a snappy enough story.  It probably won’t light anyone’s socks on fire, but it is very smoothly written, has an entertaining premise and very attractive art.

The basic concept for the story is interesting: What if a loved one died in an accident, but there was a private agency that could go back in time and pluck your loved one into the future?  Who wouldn’t want to do that for a family member?

Debris #1 – Review

By: Kurtis J. Wiebe (writer), Riley Rossmo (art), Owen Gieni (colors), Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: Hundreds of years after the fall of humanity, a young woman defends the last outpost of humans from mechanical monstrosities.

Review: This was a little disappointing on a couple of fronts.  As I mentioned in my “Picks of the Week“, the primary attraction on this issue was the art of Riley Rossmo.  I loved him on Proof and loved him in Cowboy Ninja Viking.  I even liked the art in Green Wake a lot, but found the narrative in that story to be really boring.  So, despite my reluctance to read another comic written by Wiebe (he also wrote The Intrepids which I ended up not caring for much and I didn’t enjoy Peter Panzerfaust as much as everyone else), I wanted to give this a try.  Surely Rossmo drawing post-apocalypse stuff would really take advantage of his scratchy and vital style.

The Secret History of DB Cooper #4 – Review

By: Brian Churilla (writer, artist, colors) & Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: Agent Cooper gets closer to discovering the identity of the Soviet agent.

Quick Review: This has been a very pleasing series.  Back in issue #1, it started with such weirdness that it was hard not to love.  But…..we’ve all seen comics with wacky concepts quickly go off the rails as it becomes clear that there’s no real meat to the tale.

Secret History of DB Cooper #2 – Review

By: Brian Churilla (writer/artist), Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: More craziness with DB Cooper: Psychic CIA Agent

Recap/Review (with minor SPOILERS): Trippy.  That’s probably the best way to describe this comic.  Now, this second issue doesn’t catch you off-guard quite the way that Issue #1 did…that issue was really something else.  Still, the crazy just keeps flowing in this issue, and we also get a fair amount of background information on the who/what/why/when/where/how of the infamous DB Cooper.

The crazy?  That happens right off the bat as we see DB locked in dreamscape combat against some horrible monster.  It’s this huge slug-thing with a gaping, toothy mouth, no eyes and two scrawny arms.  But the really awful thing about the monster visually is that it has old-lady breasts: long, saggy and with a odd fuzz of hair on them (like eyebrows that need to be plucked).  It’s a really disturbing visual and gives you a sense of, “Ugh…nasty.  I shouldn’t be looking at this.”  Yet…it’s hard to tear your eyes away as Agent Cooper, in trench coat, sunglasses and katana does battle with this horrid thingie.  Finally, he chops its head off and we cut to a scene from a Czech opera house to see some Stalinesque Communist Party big-wig have his head fall off into his date’s lap.  Whoa!  Another psychic/dreamscape assassination for Agent Cooper!

What’s weird about this scene is that it messes slightly with the mechanic we thought we learned about last issue: Agent Cooper goes into a dreamscape and psychically assassinates Soviet VIPs.  How does a Communist dude with a huge mustache psychically manifest as a slug-monster with granny boobs?  Hmmm…  Weird…

So, that’s the crazy in this issue.  But, as mentioned above, we also get a lot more background on who DB Cooper is and how he’s come to exist in this disheveled state where he’s become the top psychic assassin for the CIA.  Turns out he had his young daughter kidnapped and she was never found.  Ouch!  Then his marriage didn’t survive the stress of losing a child.  Double ouch!  And that’s turned him into this hard-boiled guy who just doesn’t give a crap anymore…except that he’s still kinda looking for his daughter and thinks he may be about to find her in the dreamscape world.

An interesting thing in this comic is that we see Cooper from different perspectives.  In the Dreamscape….we’re clearly seeing things from his point of view.  And oddly, he seems much more sane in this dreamscape where he fights massive slug-monsters with granny boobs than he does in the “real world”.  There he’s just an incredibly damaged human being who is being kinda used by the CIA.  But ironically, when we see him in the “real world”, it’s all seen from the standpoint of a neutral observer.  Crazy people never think they’re crazy, right?

The art is very effective.  It’s very blunt and direct and full of classic cartooning.  It isn’t art that you’d call “beautiful”, but it more than fulfills its storytelling mission.

Conclusion: A really good issue that dials back the crazy a little bit to give us more background on the central character.

Grade: B

– Dean Stell

Prophet #24 – Review

By: Brandon Graham (writer), Farel Dalrymple (art), Joseph Bergin, III (colors), Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: Will a new artist affect the magic of Prophet?

Recap/Review (with mild SPOILERS): The first three issues of Prophet since the relaunch have been magical.  But…we all know how touchy a thing success and momentum in comics can be, so it was going to be very curious to see if Prophet could seamlessly weather an art change at this early phase of the story.

With Simon Roy moving out and Farel Dalrymple coming in, the comic doesn’t really miss a beat.  Given my druthers, I probably prefer the slightly more expansive storytelling of Roy, but Dalrymple is working in much the same vibe and style and less observant readers probably won’t even notice the change.

Similarly, the story keeps chugging along just fine.  Granted, after the BIG revelation at the end of Prophet #23, this is a very different tale.  No longer is this story taking place on a future Earth as we see the action shift to a far-away planet and a new and different John Prophet.  Mysteries abound and writer Graham seems to be in no hurry to explain anything.  The reader gets exposed to information and knowledge at the same pace as Prophet, so we really don’t know what’s going on as he traverses this bizarre, abandoned space station.

Prophet #23 – Review

By: Brandon Graham & Simon Roy (story), Roy (art), Richard Ballermann (colors), Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: John Prophet continues his mission across the future-Earth wasteland with an assassin in hot pursuit.

Review: This was another great issue, but confounding to review.  It is very hard to put into words what makes this such an enjoyable reading experience… which is odd, because I review a LOT of comics.  It’s really one of those cases where the best thing I can say is, “Try it. You’ll like it.”

But, since this IS a comic review site, I should probably make an attempt to put my love into words (even knowing it won’t do the work justice):

1. Worldbuilding – Beyond the fact that John Prophet has awoken in on some future-Earth that is a wasteland and is dominated by aliens and evolved insects, we really don’t know much.  Everything we see in the story is through the eyes of Prophet and he is only letting us tag along.  There is never a point in the comic where we cut away from Prophet to see what the insects are up to or anything else that would give the reader additional insight.  It is a simple, but powerful narrative technique.  Sometimes this pacing where mysteries aren’t revealed can be frustrating, but because Graham isn’t bouncing all over the place with the action, you’re content to let things unfold at their own pace.

2. Stoicism – Nothing deters Prophet.  He just keeps plugging away at his “mission”.  Only, his mission isn’t ever that clear.  Again, the reader isn’t really his companion on the journey; Prophet is just letting us follow him.  As he goes forward, things happen and we learn stuff, but Prophet isn’t going to do a lot of inner monologue to explain events.  At one point in this issue, he loses an arm, but there isn’t any melodrama where he screams and there aren’t panels of him spurting blood.  He is undeterred because he still has a mission.  Just this little thing is such a relief compared to some superhero comics where loss of arm can generate an entire spin-off miniseries.

3. Simple text. – I mentioned above how the narrative is simple and linear and the text matches that.  In some ways, it reminds me of proof-reading my kid’s essays from school.  On one hand, you chuckle because the sentences are short and simple.  But, there is a lot of power in short/simple sentence structure (certainly more power than in long, complex sentences with lots of commas).  Graham just keeps it moving with these blunt sentences: Bang, bang, bang…

Secret History of DB Cooper #1 – Review

By: Brian Churilla (writer/artist) & Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: A possible back-story for DB Cooper.

Background: The name DB Cooper is either going to ring a bell for you or it won’t.  The “true story” upshot is that back in 1971 a man using the name DB Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 in the Pacific Northwest claiming to have a bomb in a briefcase.  He made a ransom demand of (a) money and (b) parachutes.  The plane landed to give him these items and then took off again (as ordered by Cooper).  At some point on this second flight, Cooper went to the back of the cargo area of the 727 and apparently parachuted from the ramp on the back of the plane, never to be seen again.  Seriously, no one knows what happened to him or who DB Cooper even was.  There aren’t even many clues, but the story is fantastic enough to be fodder for all manner of “unsolved mystery” TV shows over the years.  Did Cooper die during the parachute attempt?  Did he get away?  Or was the explanation more fantastical?

Review: This was a wonderfully trippy comic from Churilla.  From a plot standpoint, it tells a possible back-story for Cooper by using a “one week earlier….” mechanic.  We are introduced to “Agent” Cooper, although we are never told WHAT or WHO he is an agent for.  And we see this Agent Cooper as he trudges through a kinda psychadelic wasteland wearing a suit (MiB-style), carrying a katana, cigarette dangling from his lips and talking to… an imaginary teddy bear???  Anyway, he looks very bad-ass in a Reservoir Dogs sort of way.  As the story moves along, we are also introduced to some dastardly Soviet government official eating his dinner and it becomes clear than somehow, Cooper’s weird trip through this wasteland is actually some kind of psychic assassination plot against the Soviet official.  At least that’s what I think is going on.  [Note: Rereading this during proof-reading and it is clear that I’m not doing the story justice.  It’s weird and wonderful.  Trust me, if you like indie comics, you’ll enjoy this.]

Basically, the story dwells in that place where you kinda know what is going on, but it is never made explicitly clear.  There are clues galore, but how the reader assembles the clues together is really kinda up the them.

Prophet #22 – Review

By: Brandon Graham & Simon Roy (story), Roy (art), Richard Ballermann (colors) & Ed Brisson (letters)

The Story: John Prophet continues to find his way in a future wasteland Earth.

Five Things: 

1. No prior knowledge required. – I missed the first issue of this Prophet relaunch (the unfortunately numbered Prophet #21) because I had zero interest in a dusted off 90’s Image title.  But, after hearing everyone hoot and holler about that issue, I checked it out and loved it.  This issue continues to show that you don’t need to know anything about the original Prophet series.  I haven’t even read the Wiki entry about the old series and have not a clue what it was even about. Yet, I love this series.  The set-up is so simple: John Prophet emerges onto the surface of a future Earth that is a barren wasteland.  He’s clearly been in an underground “hibernation” for some time and nothing is as he remembered it.  That’s all, if you can wrap your mind around that, you’ll be fine.

2. Mysteries abound. – Part of the fun of a book like this is figuring out what is going on.  What happened to the Earth?  How far into the future is this taking place?  What animals do these mutants descend from?  Very little is explained; much as John Prophet is on a mission, the reader is on a mission too.  And what little we learn comes from just paying attention as we look at the page and look for clues in the artwork.

3. Love the way Graham is writing this. – I typically don’t enjoy comics that use narration boxes as a prime storytelling device, but Graham makes it work here.  What I love about his narration boxes is that they are T here is no high-mindedness like you get in something like an older Batman comic, (“Gotham is a living beast.  A beast that has its own moods, but a beast that I command, blah, blah, blah….”).  Graham’s boxes all punctuate and add to the storytelling aspects of the art.  No metaphor…no simile, just descriptions of the actions.  Often times, direct is the way to go.