Creepy #11 – Review

By: Gilbert Hernandez, J. Torres, Dan Braun, Peter Bagge, Alisa Kwitney, Archie Goodwin & Jamie S. Rich (writers), Hernandez, Amy Reeder, Bagge, Zullo, Johnny Craig and Joelle Jones (art), Hernandez, Reeder, Bagge & Nate Piekos (letters)

The Story: What do you want me to say?  You know what Creepy is!  It’s a black and white anthology horror comic.

Review: If you had to draw up a checklist for a great issue of Creepy it would look like this: (a) zero stories that suck, (b) great black and white art, (c) “Oh, Henry!” endings galore and (d) one stellar story.

The only place this issue stumbles a little is that it doesn’t have that ONE story that really sticks out.  Everything is very, very good, but nothing quite rises to that level of awesomeness that it can carry the entire $4.99 issue by itself.

Ghosts #1 – Review

By: Way too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Proton packs won’t work against these ghosts—not even if you merge streams.

The Review: Early in my reviewing career, I covered an intermittent anthology series called The Gathering (which has no relation to the card game that somehow survived my prepubescent years).  At the time, I felt most of its offbeat features were raw and unpolished, on both the story and art sides.  Vertigo’s Ghosts takes up pretty much the same format, only with established talents on board, resulting in a much more impressive book.  Get ready; this one’s a doozy.

Fatima: The Blood Spinners #2 – Review

By: Gilbert Hernandez (writer/artist)

The Story: We witness the fall of society and see Fatima end up in a pretty bad situation.

Quick Review: The main attraction here is simply watching Gilbert Hernandez do his thing.  If you’ve ever heard the name “Gilbert Hernandez” and knew you should read Love and Rockets, but were scared off by the pile of material…..this is your chance to dip a toe into the water and see what kind of creator he is.  Even if this work is different thematically than L&R, it’s you can still tell the type of storyteller and artist that Gilbert is from this work.

The “story” is pretty straight-up, fall-of-society stuff.  There’s a new drug called Spin that turns addicts into zombie-like creatures.  Our heroine, Fatima, is basically a cop who is trying to keep law and order, but failing in the face of huge number of Spin addicts and possible corruption in the police force.  There’s intrigue and inter-personal relationships and all the stuff that you’d expect in a Hernandez story.

Fatima: The Blood Spinners #1 – Review

By: Gilbert Hernandez (story & art)

The Story: Gilbert Hernandez (of Love & Rockets fame) gives us a new 4-issue limited series about a cop named Fatima and some zombie-like creatures.

Quick review: Confession time….I’ve never read any of Love and Rockets.  Lots of my fellow comic fans who enjoy “indie” comics (although I hate the “indie” term) swear by L&R, but I’ve always looked at the vast amount of material that’s been published and said, “Shoosh–that’s a lot of catching up to do when I have so many other things I want to read.”  So I’ve never read L&R….  But, I have flipped through enough issue to know that I enjoy the cartooning styles of the Brothers Hernandez so it was a no-brainer to pick up this new miniseries from Dark Horse.

I Zombie #12 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Gilbert Hernandez (art), Laura Allred (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Review: Anyone who has followed my reviews of this series knows that I’m a serious fan of Mike Allred’s art, so when I first flipped this issue open, I said, “Hey!  This isn’t Mike Allred art!  Oh…wait a minute….this looks like one of the Hernandez brothers!  Hot dog!”  A glance at the credits shows that, in fact, our guest artist on this issue is Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame (among other things).  Vertigo just does a TREMENDOUS job of bringing in guest artists who are incredibly talented and pretty consistent with the look and feel of the series.

Since I’m already talking about Mr. Hernandez, let’s stick with his art.  He is a great example of knowing what lines are important and the fact that sometimes you don’t have to noodle with your art and make everything hyper-detailed to get across the impression that the artist is trying to convey.  Just as a random example, there is a page in this issue with a ghostly cowboy.  He is pot-bellied, but Hernandez is able to communicate this fat belly with a mere rounding of the contour of the character on one side and three short lines above the belly (showing where the shift folds to envelope the belly).  That’s it.  And then to top this off, colorist Laura Allred just colors the shirt flat blue.  What a relief when you see image after image in Marvel/DC superhero comics where there would be a lot more linework and some heavily rendered coloring showing off the glistening highlights of the dude’s fat belly.  This is a great issue from an art standpoint.

The story is up to the task too.  My biggest complaint with I Zombie is that there is too much stuff going on in most of these issues.  This issue is very streamlined as it amounts to a simply back-story on Ellie the Ghost.  Long time readers of the series know that Ellie is main-character, Gwyn’s best friend, but we haven’t really known much about her: How she died?  Why she hangs out in the graveyard?  How did she met Gwyn?  All are answered here.