Coffin Hill #6 – Review

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eve de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: It’s about time someone made these woods safe for witchcraft again.

The Review: In my creative writing days at undergrad, I had a professor who taught us how every character, setting, object, and detail in a story becomes part of that story’s “inventory.”  Once you create it, it remains in existence for the writer to call upon later.  It’s a great tip for getting yourself out of fictional dead ends, but it also explains the craft behind the greatest stories.  Knowing and using one’s inventory is what gives a story its cohesion and flow.

Mysteries probably rely on their inventories more than almost any other genre of fiction.  You know that thrill you get from a (good) mystery, when the solution arises from a host of seemingly inconsequential details established early on?  That’s making good use of inventory.  In contrast, Kittredge simply writes in whatever solution she needs, on the spot, to get to where she needs to go next.

Coffin Hill #5 – Review

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eve de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: The wicked witch strikes against the wicked stepfather.

The Review: I started reading Hinterkind and Coffin Hill at around the same time, and it’s been interesting seeing them develop on parallel lines.  With Hinterkind having recently landed on my Drop List, the big question was whether Coffin Hill would suffer the same fate.  Both share the same defect of being too comfortable in their genre conventions and both have problems settling on a consistent tone.  Given these similarities, Coffin Hill should also be Dropped.

Yet somehow, I still feel Coffin Hill deserves a little more leeway than Hinterkind did.  Kittredge definitely made things easier on herself by limiting the size of her cast and further focusing on a select few.  Even if you don’t end up liking Eve, Nate, or Mel very much, at least you have a strong sense of who they are, where they’re coming from, and what their relationships to each other are.  They’re interesting in ways that the characters of Hinterkind only aspire to be.

Coffin Hill #4 – Review

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eve de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: Friends are forever—and their betrayals last even longer.

The Review: Since Kittredge has, if nothing else, established that Coffin Hill is a series where tragedy prevails even in moments of triumph, it was impossible not to suspect that Mel’s miraculous recovery last issue was not as it seemed.  I put up the theory that Mel had come back deranged, the better to face once more the darkness in the woods which stole her sanity in the first place.

The truth is not quite so dramatic, being a case of simple possession.  Using a respectable bit of cop logic, Eve cuts to the chase immediately and demands to know who has invaded her friend’s body and why.  Obviously, the answers are vague and non-committal, riddled with references to “the Harvest” and so on.  Whether anything of the original Mel is left in there, though, it seems pretty foregone that whatever victory Eve manages to eke out will be pyrrhic.  Even if Eve returns Mel to normal, she’ll have placed a massive obstacle between herself and Nate, the only character she’s shown consistent real feelings for.

Coffin Hill #3 – Review

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: Eve takes a break from home at the insane asylum.

The Review: For a series that claims there’s an evil horror lurking within its pages, Coffin Hill hasn’t been all that scary so far—and I say this as a bona fide scaredy-cat.  I once watched the Japanese version of The Ring while I was home alone and found myself afterward incapable of proceeding down the ominously dark hall to my bedroom for the rest of the night.  I laid in the living room, watching Dharma & Greg reruns, until dawn.  I was eighteen.

Granted, it’s been some years since then (nearly ten—gah, gah!), but Coffin Hill should still have some kind of frightening effect, even if only a slight one, just to live up to the demands of its genre.  Maybe I’ve grown too experienced to get drawn in by Kittredge’s gimmicks, which rely far too heavily on overused witching motifs: rats, crows, flies, skulls, woods, children’s rhymes, etc.  These things are so common to the witch mythology that they lose a lot of their fictional power after a certain age.

Coffin Hill #2 – Review

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: The woods can be a magical place to be—but is that necessarily a good thing?

The Review: The debut issue of Coffin Hill introduced an interesting premise, but was altogether too vague about the specifics to really set itself out as original.  While something supernatural is obviously at work in Coffin Hill, its manifestation and its relationship to Eve Coffin and her family is rather unclear.  Until we get some specifics, it’s hard to tell if the series will be anything more than your typical tale of urban witchcraft.

This issue gets us a little closer to the details we want, though some things remain outstanding.  Mostly, we learn a little more about the Coffins’ family history, which is largely driven by powerful women, starting from Emma, the original matriarch of the American Coffins, and leading to Eve herself.  Eve also reveals a tradition of mother-daughter tensions within the Coffin legacy, as Emma herself was betrayed by her own daughter, a parallel to the spat between Eve and her mother.

Coffin Hill #1 – Review

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: Good rule of thumb is if something requires you to shed blood, it’s not a good idea.

The Review: A lot of the new material coming out of Vertigo so far has landed in the sci-fi camp, though with various degrees of scientific purity, from the hardcore FBP to the fantasy-injected Hinterkind.  But the supernatural is Vertigo’s bread-and-butter, and its greatest works have invariably spawned from that genre.  Coffin Hill, with its woods and witches, represents a return to that no-holds-barred magical realism which gave Vertigo its good name.

Under those terms, the debut issue plants itself firmly within that tradition, though it fails to break new ground.  The story Kittredge brings to us is very much inspired by the wannabe occultism that once peppered certain cliques of outcasts in high schools throughout the land.  Indeed, in flashbacks to Eve Coffin’s teenage years, her and her friends’ appearances are replete with punk and goth influences (clunky belts and lots of eye make-up), trivializing the kind of witchcraft involved in the series—at first.

The Unwritten #52 – Review

By: Mike Carey (writer), Peter Gross (some layouts & inks), Mark Buckingham (some pencils), Dean Ormston & Inaki Miranda (finishes), Chris Chuckry (colors) and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: The Fables miniseries being published under The Unwritten title continues.

Review (with SPOILERS): I’m amazed that this story-arc isn’t getting any better.  To put things in context, I just finished prepping some recent issues of The Unwritten for binding.  Doing that reminded me of those really powerful stories that we got over the last ~20 issues of The Unwritten and it really illustrated how vapid this crossover with Fables truly is.  Even though the first couple issues of this story have been poor, I hoped that at some point, we’d get back to some of the themes of The Unwritten, but it doesn’t seem likely at this point.

This is just a crummy story and a crappy publication gimmick.  The story within these first three Fables/Unwritten issues just isn’t very deep and it isn’t even much of an Unwritten story.  It’s Fables characters fighting a Fables villain….ergo it is a Fables story.  Furthermore, there isn’t much more to the story than Good Guys vs. Bad Guys.  The Unwritten is/was so much more than that.  It was never a story about a “bad guy” who was plotting to kill everyone.  It was about the power of stories themselves to alter reality.  Maybe that was too esoteric of a concept for the comic market because I don’t think The Unwritten has ever sold that well….and maybe that’s why they crossed it over with the much more popular Fables?

The Unwritten #50 – Review

By: brace yourself–Mike Carey and Bill Willingham (writers), Peter Gross, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha and Inaki Miranda (art), Chris Chuckry (colors) and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: The Unwritten and Fables universes cross over.

Review (with SPOILERS): Ugh….despite being very attractive and nicely written, this is a disaster of a comic from a creative standpoint.

Last month in The Unwritten #49 we saw that Tom Taylor attempted to reach the “beginning” of all stories in his attempt to cure what ails the power of stories.  When he reached the “beginning”, he found himself amidst the characters of Fables.  At the time, it seemed very misplaced and forced.  After all, the Fables aren’t even the most important story characters that DC owns the right to.  It would have made more sense for Tom to find himself in the Fortress of Solitude or the Batcave.  Further, the whole thing smacked of the type of crossover the people read Vertigo comics to avoid.

Unfortunately, this lovely-looking issue doesn’t do anything to make me feel better about things.  Essentially, this turns into an issue of Fables wherein several of the characters have attempted to summon a powerful wizard to aid them in their battle against Mister Dark and his minions.  Naturally, they are somewhat perturbed to have a sloppy looking modern adult (Tom) rather than a “real” wizard. You’d think that a group of characters who shared a publisher with Hellblazer for years would know better than to underestimate a rumbled looking man.

Fairest #14 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Barry Kitson (art), Inaki Miranda (finishes), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: A crappy meal can get in the way of any date.

The Review: Love is the trickiest of all things to manage and the most difficult to obtain, particularly when it’s true.  Considering how many fables are dedicated to illustrating those points, it should perhaps be no surprise that so many of our Fables have been, to say the least, unlucky in love.  In that regard, the fairest of the Fables endure a special kind of suffering: for all their beauty and other virtues, they live rather lonely, loveless lives, which are the worst kind.

So it goes with Princess Alder, the dryad, who sees the most depressing problem in her life as her “deplorable dating life.”  Honestly, this would be an exhausting premise for a story had this involved any other kind of woman—namely human woman.  Fiction nowadays is inundated with stories about women running the gauntlet of the dating game.  But put a half-tree, forest creature in the same high-heeled shoes and suddenly you have a story that’s funny and kind of brilliant.

Fairest #13 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors)

The Story: It’s a war between freaks on the streets of Tokyo—someone grab the popcorn.

The Review: Every great journey starts out looking for one thing, only to find another.  A young man leaves his desert homeworld in search of adventure and winds up saving the galaxy.  A hobbit sets off to see the elves and along the way brings down a dark lord.  A boy with glasses goes to magic school to find companionship and strikes down the most evil wizard of his time.  Ultimately, however, they all find what they’re looking for in the end.

For Rapunzel, this arc has just been yet another chapter in her quest to find her children.  If you opened this issue expecting to see twin girls waiting for their mother on the last page, you’ll be mightily disappointed, to say the least.  But although Rapunzel fails once again to retrieve her children—her human children, at any rate—the fact that she can finally return to her ex-lover with the bounty she promised makes for a mostly complete resolution of Beukes’ story.

Young Romance #1 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Superhero love is a many-splendored thing…

The Review: Young Romance is one of those titles that a proper reviewer probably should feel a little bit of embarrassment about reading, given its hopelessly gimmicky nature.  Even so, I do kind of like the grab-bag format of these things, and I appreciate that DC has enough of a sense of humor to do something this cheesy.  Besides, with the mix of talent involved, you never know if you might run into a gem of a feature, promising better things from the creators involved.

Fairest #12 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors)

The Story: Can a fox outfox a wolf and a witch?

The Review: Call this a critic’s existential crisis, but I often wonder if at the end of the day, my reviews have any sway at all.  I mean, I can’t even sway my two-year-old niece to stop dancing while I’m trying to put her pants back on her.  I can’t sway my friend to stop falling for girls who call him “Idiot” within a week of the relationship.  So what hope do I have of reaching out to strangers on the internet, rather yet the powers that be in the business?

But if I do have any influence in the comic book world, I’d use a lot of it to get Beukes an ongoing title from DC or Vertigo, ASAP.  I’ve noticed a lot of writers can’t hit the proper tension at different parts of their stories, either going too big too early and fizzling out, or sticking to a slow burn for too long then throwing in a whole lot of flash and bang at the last second.  Beukes hits exactly the right note for her penultimate issue; you can actually feel the action rising to a climax, with the various characters drawing closer together, setting the stage for the final blowout next month.  You can tell it’s all going exactly according to Beukes’ plan.

Fairest #11 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors)

The Story: What’s up, boy?  Who fell down the well?

The Review: When I wrote the first draft of this review, I originally praised DC for maintaining its interest in Vertigo, because honestly, there’s where most of the really original (if not always outstanding) titles are.  Then I found out from their April solicitations that Saucer Country, a title I only recently declared as one of my favorites, was getting canned.  Once again, I prove to have a gift for clinging to things that are destined to leave me.*

Anyway, before my enthusiasm got mercilessly shot down, I also made a point of commending DC for using Vertigo as a convenient way of cultivating talent to potentially leverage them for their mainstream books later.  What brought about this now-premature approval was this mostly amazing issue of Fairest, which makes me feel the smartest choice would be to let Beukes pitch an ongoing Vertigo title of her choice before priming her as a natural successor to Justice League Dark or Sword of Sorcery.

Fairest #10 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: Meet the only girl who can have multiple bad hair days in a 24-hour period.

The Review: Now that I think about it, women do make up a substantial part of the Fables population, don’t they?  You can’t deny the popularity of the fairy tale ladies far outstrips that of the guys, which explains not only their prominence in this universe, but also the fact that they can have long, involved storylines that do not center on romantic entanglements—at least, in theory.  Up until this arc, Fairest has tended to focus on the heroines’ love lives.

That’s all changed with Rapunzel’s search for her children.  In addition to the rather scandalous lifestyle choices she’s made over the years, Rapunzel simply seems more raw and primal than her fellow fair ladies.  You certainly can’t see Snow, Briar, Rose, or Cindy, even at their most desperate hour, spinning a nest of their own hair, strung and webbed across the boughs of a forest.  Combined with her urgent, instinctual hunt for her children, Punzel has an animalistic quality that makes her relationship with a kitsune almost logical.

Fairest #9 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: When will people ever learn that you can’t always trust a foxy lady?

The Review: Any time you spin off a title, you’re going to have to run into questions of whether there’s actually demand for the sibling series (and material to meet it), or whether you’re simply being exploitive.  Let’s be honest with ourselves; most spin-offs fall clearly and pathetically into the latter category.  For most of Fairest’s run, the jury was still out on where the series stands.  It’s not as if there’d been a huge outcry for more stories featuring Fables’ most beautiful stars.

Between her rock-solid first issue and the one on review today, Beukes has made a strong case that Fairest has a whole wealth of stories we’d be interested to hear, but which Fables doesn’t have the time to service.  Flashing back to the early days of Fabletown reminds us that while Snow White and Bigby were out determining the fate of fairy tale characters everywhere, every Fable had a life to live, and there’s no reason to believe theirs were any less intriguing or eventful than their deputy mayor and sheriff.

Fairest #8 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: And here you thought the most dangerous thing about origami was the paper cuts.

The Review: I consider myself a cautious optimist by nature and practice.  I don’t blind myself to risks, but I tend to bet on the best possible outcome.  With showcase titles, I always look on the next feature with the hope that it’ll be better than the last.  Fairest has so far produced only one complete arc, a harmless but not outstanding affair whose art far surpassed the story.  The standalone that came after, well—I still waver between calling it bad or just mediocre.

But when every new storyline comes attached with a whole new creative team, there’s always a chance a pleasant surprise lies in wait.  Beukes gets your attention right away by setting a trend of defeating expectations.  At first, Rapunzel’s morose opening monologue leads you to believe you’re in for a sizable set-up to a simmering drama, but then the windows burst, showering her and her loyal haircutter Joel with a thousand origami cranes and shards of glass, and you know you’re in for a different kind of treat.

Strange Adventures – Review

By: Various (see below)

The Story: A Vertigo anthology with a sci-fi bent.

[Note: The regular “what’s good”/”what’s not so good” format doesn’t work so well for an anthology like this.  Don’t worry, it’ll return…]

Case 21: (Selwyn Hinds, writer & Denys Cowan, art) A very clever story dealing with a dystopian future police state where a tattoo artist is forced to make some pretty harsh decisions.  It’s well written and has some nice dynamic artwork, including a topless lady getting into a fight with the jackbooted cops.  Cool twist at the end too.  I’d definitely be in favor of seeing more of this story.

The White Room:  (Talia Hershewe, writer & Juan Bobillo, art)  I didn’t love this story as much.  It is set in the future and deals with a couple of punk-kids’ experience with a type of virtual reality/drug called The White Room.  Misadventures in virtual realities or hallucinogenic trips just aren’t my bag, so my lack of enjoyment is 100% due to the subject matter.  Bobillo’s painted and pinkish-tinged art is very visually appealing.

Partners: (Peter Milligan, writer & Sylvain Savoia, art)  This story didn’t really scratch my itch either although I think there is a clever premise within it.  The problem is that the cool twist is revealed a little too soon in the story and that robs it of some of its juice.  For some reason, the artwork reminds me of Charles Burns, but I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it’s because the subject matter is kids with identity crises sitting around a campfire?

All the Pretty Ponies: (Lauren Beukes, writer & Inaki Miranda, art)  This was one of the stars of the issue for me.  What starts out as a Surrogates-type story where rich people are paying money to inhabit and take virtual/remote control of a bunch of poor folks has a very wicked twist.  Great art by Miranda too.  This is another I’d like to see more of.

Ultra the Multi-Alien: (Jeff Lemire, writer and art)  Is it any surprise that Jeff Lemire would give us a heart-wrenching and plaintive tale?  The art is typical Lemire, emotive and stylized, and will be immediately familiar to any fan of Sweet Tooth or Essex County.  The subject matter hits the same types of notes as those other works too.  I don’t want to spoil the twist, but the story deals with an astronaut who is far from home in more ways than one.  More please!

Refuse: (Ross Campbell, writer and art) This story wins the award for the grossest, holy crap moment of the issue.  I really liked Ross’ willingness to show such a nasty looking story and anyone who is willing to draw that has got some real potential.  But, I didn’t really understand the purpose of the story and why this mother is living in such a filthy apartment that her child has been taken away by social services.

Birds of Prey #9 – Review

By Gail Simone (writer), Inaki Miranda (art), Nei Ruffino (colors), Dave Sharp (letters)

The Story: Batman and Oracle race to save the mind of Black Canary (still suffering from Mortis’ touch from last issue), while the rest of the Birds work to escape from the big bad’s headquarters (…in a school bus. That, I did not see coming.)

What’s Good: Man, where to start? First of all, huge kudos to Stanley “Artgerm” Lau for an absolutely awesome cover. I just wish Oracle had been there too, either instead of or in addition to Hawk.

Speaking of art, that makes a nice segue to the art on his issue. Inaki Miranda dropped my jaw on every single page. This is my first exposure to his work, but you can bet he’s now near the top of my list of comic-art careers to follow. While this caliber of art would be excellent on any book, his lightly penciled but beautifully detailed pages fit the book surprisingly well. (Given Simone’s usually harsh prose and imagery, bolder art styles seem to complement her work better overall, but somehow Miranda manages to marry image to words very well indeed.) I have to especially point out Canary’s opening hallucination sequence as an absolute artwork triumph. Everything from the expression on Canary’s face, to the evil pleasure Mortis is obviously taking in her distress, to the body language of the characters that Canary’s memory conjures, it’s all fantastic. (And, while the pencils and inking are beautiful, credit must also go to colorist Ruffino, who makes great use of shadows and color-contrasts in the sequence to make everything stand out just as it should.) Way to go, art team!

Fables #99 – Review

by Bill Willingham (writer), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: Mr. North confronts Mr. Dark and tells him of Totenkinder’s challenge to single combat as the Dark Man continues to build his domain.

What’s Good: I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Rose Red arc.  Overall, it meandered a bit and the result was that I wasn’t anywhere near as excited for Fables #100 as I should be.  All of that changed with this issue, which had me salivating for #100.  This comic should serve as a template for how to construct an effective build-up issue.

Much of this is because Willingham spends much of this issue showing, and not just telling, what is at stake.  We get a disturbing peek into Mister Dark’s transformed New York City, one that’s rife with irrational violence, cruelty, apathy, and, well, zombies.  It’s a dark and diseased place and instantly, next month’s climactic issue feels all the more important.  More than that though, Willingham hypes #100 by basically telling us exactly what that book is going to be about: an epic duel between Mister Dark and the suped-up Totenkinder.

Willingham relays this purely through a tense dialogue between North and Dark.  I love it when writers have immensely powerful entities just… talk.  It’s great to have scenes where characters who are essentially gods only imply their powers and merely converse, while showing a certain respect for one another.  It’s always an awesome dynamic and Willingham does it well.  More importantly, by merely talking about what will, or might, happen next month without actually giving us any action this month, Willingham ratchets up the tension and makes us want #100 all the more.