Hinterkind #5 – Review

By: Ian Edginton (story), Francesco Trifogli (art), Cris Peter (colors)

The Story: When trying to escape a self-destructing facility, just follow your nose.

The Review: I know what you’re all thinking: how could I have possibly have delayed in reviewing what has been the most exciting series currently produced by Vertigo?  Kidding aside, I do apologize for the lateness, but I sincerely believed that I had already Dropped this title.  Talk about your Freudian slips.  It doesn’t take a shrink to conclude that I was convinced I had stopped reading Hinterkind probably because I subconsciously wanted to stop reading it.

I don’t meant to suggest that Edginton’s writing has been bad, necessarily—just uninspired.  In reading Hinterkind, I never feel like I’m reading an original work so much as a mish-mish of elements poached from other works.  Now, this in itself is not a problem, so long as the writer can keep things clean and unified.  Saga, for example, never has a problem with cohesion because no matter how many characters Brian K. Vaughan throws in, no matter their personal arcs, they all revolve around the nucleus of Alana and Marko’s illicit relationship.  There’s no such common ground for anyone in Hinterkind.

Hinterkind #4 – Review

By: Ian Edginton (story), Francesco Trifogli (art), Cris Peter (colors)

The Story: It’s never a good thing when your doctor is sicker than you are.

The Review: One of the unfortunate necessities of serial fiction is that it doesn’t have much tolerance for stories that need extra time to get their acts together.  With novels, you come in prepared for a few chapters of exposition, where the plot is slowly constructing itself, because you have the luxury of reading on until you get some action.  When the story comes to you in monthly doses, it’s natural to expect a little more bang for your buck.

It’s pretty clear that Edginton has spent the last few issues painstakingly putting the big pieces of Hinterkind together, establishing the various character groupings (Prosper and Angus, Asa’s scouting party, Hobb’s gang, Starla’s posse, etc.) and multiple plotlines (Angus’ mutation, the oncoming Hinterkind conflicts, humanity’s general survival, etc.).  The title isn’t lacking in material, just cohesiveness.  Four issues in, you’d be hard-pressed to explain to a potential reader what Hinterkind is about.

Hinterkind #3 – Review

By: Ian Edginton (story), Francesco Trifogli (art), Cris Peter (colors)

The Story: If there’s one thing all can bond over, it’s the addictive qualities of daytime soaps.

The Review: There are few true victims in the conflicts between races.  Oh, there may be an a genuine dispute if you go back far enough, but at a certain point, no one can really claim to be on the high road anymore.  Whether one is the instigator or the one reacting in vengeance, both are doing wrong to the other, and for as long as the conflict continues, there are no people on the side of justice—only those who profit and those who don’t.

That’s pretty much the scenario we see between humanity and the Hinterkind, or most of them at least.  It’s unclear how many subscribe to the view Jon Hobb self-righteously proclaims to Prosper in this issue, that the Hinterkind simply let humanity do its own thing then “retreated into myth” as a consequence.  It’s impossible to believe the Hinterkind were as passive as all that, especially when so many of them seem so naturally inclined to prey on humans (“Eat you all up, an’ suck out your marrow!”  “Leave nothin’ but a rag, a bone and a hank of hair!”).  It’s much more likely that the more uncouth Hinterkind gave in to their impulses and mankind defended itself, with prejudice.

Hinterkind #2 – Review

By: Ian Edginton (story), Francesco Trifogli (art), Cris Peter (colors)

The Story: Talk about selling out your fellow humans…

The Review: The biggest failing in Hinterkind’s debut was a lack of context.  Although Edginton had produced a fairly potent combination of fantasy quest, action-adventure, and post-apocalyptic survival, there didn’t seem to be much unifying substance in the joints between these genres.  Consequently, Hinterkind has come across less like an original story and more like an assemblage of discrete fictional parts.

Slowly, however, Edginton begins to thread these parts together.  We had assumed that these mythic creatures, officially called “Hinterkind” (as opposed to, say, mankind), came part and parcel with “the fall” mentioned last month and were in some way responsible for the current state of human affairs.  That assumption proves false when Prosper and Angus, after dealing with a troll, indicate it’s the first time they’ve ever seen or heard of one.  If the Hinterkind weren’t the cause of the fall, then where do they come into the story?

Hinterkind #1 – Review

By: Ian Edginton (story), Francesco Trifogli (art). Chris Peter (colors)

The Story: In a land where the hunters have become the hunted, the hunted decide to hunt back.

The Review: I’ve never denied that I’m a DC fan, but I don’t think I’ve ever made known my particular love for Vertigo.  The Books of Magic and Sandman were two of the major works that led me to more serious comic book reading, and some of my favorite titles afterward came from the same publisher.  I confess it’s been a little difficult, seeing Vertigo’s position as primo indie publisher usurped by Image, but equally encouraging to see it making its revival now.

Hinterkind is the vanguard of Vertigo’s second wave of new titles, a smart position for the series since its premise has the potential for the broadest appeal: humans once again facing the wane of their species in a disaster-stricken world populated by wild animals and mythical beasts.  The characters are young, adventurous, and sensitive, making them easy to like.  Edginton’s writing is perhaps prone to too much exposition, but otherwise respectable.  In fact, Hinterkind’s biggest flaw is not so much in its execution as in a failure to take groundbreaking chances in its content.