God is Dead #1 – Review

By: Jonathan Hickman and Mike Costa (writers), Di Amorim (art), Juanmar (colors) and Kurt Hathaway (letters)

The Story: Gods return to the Earth.  Some people dig it, some people don’t.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): This is an interesting issue.  I’m not sure it is a great issue, but it was entertaining and raised a few philosophical questions that could be intriguing if the creators choose to pursue them.

Honestly, the main impetus to buy this comic was the Hickman name on the cover.  I just think that Hickman is a font of nifty ideas.  He’s also gifted from a graphical design and presentation standpoint and coming along as a pure writer.  He’s one to watch and he’s rarely guilty of being boring, so I’ll sample just about anything with his name on the cover.  Until I read the issue, I wasn’t aware that this was a collaboration with Mike Costa, but his name shouldn’t keep anyone away.  Mike Costa’s GI Joe: Cobra title has consistently been the best GI Joe book the last few years by featuring tight plotting and aspiring to be something other than a fanboy ode.

The basic premise of God is Dead is that the gods of old return to the Earth.  We’re talking about Odin and Zeus as well as the old Aztec and Hindu pantheons.  When the gods get here, they inspire some parts of the population to descend into religious fervor and we get things like groups in Mexico doing human sacrifices on top of the old Aztec pyramids.  Some other parts of the population want to continue with the modern world, so we’ve got a nifty little source of conflict for the series.  We also learn that the gods are working together with a plan for world-domination in a scene that is very much like seeing a supervillain team-up in a Marvel or DC comic book.

Neonomicon #4 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art), Juanmar (colors)

The Story: Neonomicon wraps up with an ending that indicates more story is yet to come.

What’s Good: It is really a shame that Alan Moore doesn’t write more comics.  Neonomicon isn’t his strongest work; and this issue isn’t even the best of this miniseries (issues 2 & 3 were better), but even Moore’s “B-list” is pretty darn good. That’s something that is easy to lose track of while the guy is giving unusual interviews expressing his continued displeasure over Watchmen and the royalties Dave Gibbons has collected; or when he’s saying that he doesn’t think any current comic creators are very good.  Personal oddities and hobo beards aside, the guy is a truly gifted writer.

Moore’s gifts hit you right in the face in this very understated issue.  There is no awful, weeklong rape scene to distract you in this issue.  It’s mostly just a postmortem on the events of the first three issues that features a lot of talking.  From a lesser writer, this could be a really tedious issue, but under Moore’s pen, the words just flow like butter.  It is almost a shame that Moore is so good at these sorts of issues, because lesser creators continually try to emulate him and they just come off like talentless chumps when they do.

That’s not to say that the issue is devoid of action.  The star of this issue is the masterful building of tension as the FBI raids the cult with cuts back-and-forth between Agent Brears getting a partial debrief outside the cult headquarters and the FBI agents storming the facility, shooting it out with the remaining cultists and getting closer and closer to you-know-who.  Moore always knows that we really want to be watching the shootout scenes, but he keeps pulling us away at just the key moment to build the tension. Bravo!

Neonomicon #3 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art), Juanmar (colors) & William Christensen (editor)

The Story: After a horrible scene to end the last issue, what will become of Agent Brears who had been kidnapped by some Lovecraftian cult and offered up as a sex toy to some water monster/god-thing.

What’s Good: It is pretty hard to get an emotional rise out of me.  I’ve consumed enough media in my life that it is really hard to make me get skeeved out or horrified by fictional subject matter, but the ending of Neonomicon #2 where our heroine, Agent Brears, was kidnapped and gang raped by some weird Lovecraft-inspired cult in a bizarre underground bath/grotto before being offered up as a sex toy to some monster from the deep really freaked me out.  It was “freaked out in a good way”, but it was one of those rare comics that stuck with me as I plowed through my 60+ long pull list for a few months since the last issue came out.  What would happen to Brears?

If anything, the last issue steeled your emotions for what was to come in this issue.  What happens is still horrid and you just cannot imagine being stuck in a situation as terrible as where Brears finds herself in this issue: locked in the grotto with a randy sea monster for days on end.  The whole thing is just vile and no punches are pulled in depicting the horror that she endures.  But, no one normal wants to read rape-comics and Alan Moore understands this, so he ends this comic with [SPOILERS] Brears and the monster forming some kind of bond and the monster taking her (willingly) out into the ocean and (we would assume) his lair.  I really can’t wait to see what happens next.

As all of this is going on, we see that the FBI is looking high and low for their missing agents.  And, between these scenes and a hallucination that Brears has, we see Moore noodling with the concept that there is truth in Lovecraft and even if he didn’t appreciate it as he wrote his works, he was channeling something bigger into his writings.  Lovecraft fans will have a field day with this, I am sure.

If Moore is pitching this story, Burrows is the one knocking the visuals out of the park.  It isn’t so much that you look at the page and say, “Wow, that is nice art.”  This is more of a triumph of storytelling in terms of what to show and what not to show or when things should be revealed to the reader.  It is just nice to see creators using the medium of comics to its fullest extent.

Neonomicon #2 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art) & Juanmar (colors)

The Story: The FBI’s investigation into a seeming cult takes a weird twist for the worse.

What’s Good: Alan Moore is just a master of the medium.  The man has nine Eisner Awards for Best Writer.  NINE!  The next closest writers are two folks tied with three each (answer below).*  His writing is just flowing and effortless and his dialog is just comfortable without resorting to gaggy jokes to pull off the banter.  With some comic writers, you read the comic and can actually envision that you could probably take a hack at writing a comic book.  You don’t get that feeling reading this comic as Moore continues this tale of two FBI agents attempting to get to the bottom of a cult that has been carving people up.

One of the things that makes Moore so gifted is that he can tell a story at multiple levels.  There is considerable background material for Neonomicon as the story is a direct continuation from The Courtyard which is a prose story written by Moore almost 20 years ago.  Further, as the FBI agents dig deeper into their investigation, it becomes clear that the cult is (possibly) inspired by the writings of HP Lovecraft and Moore’s script has many goodies for Lovecraft fans.  All that being said, if you have never read The Courtyard or a single sentence of Lovecraft, Moore has still created a comic that you can enjoy as he sends the FBI agents on an undercover mission that you KNOW is going to end horribly.

Perhaps “enjoy” isn’t quite the correct word because this issue goes to some extremely dark and uncomfortable places that run one of our main characters through quite a ringer that is especially poignant give this character’s past.  Even if you don’t bat an eye at sexuality or violence in comics, this issue may make you a little squirmy.  Let’s just say that Moore is clearly a filthy old man (and that is meant as a compliment).

Neonomicon #1 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art) & Juanmar (colors)

The Story: Two FBI agents tracking a serial killer enlist the aid of an institutionalized killer who had the same M.O.

What’s Good: It’s an Alan Moore written comic, so this comic has a much higher certainty of “not sucking” than just about any other comic book you can grab off the shelf.  At worst, you’re going to get something like Tom Strong and at best, you could get something like Promethea or Watchmen.  So, I’ll admit to being a little baffled in a few weeks when I’ll see from the sales charts that this only sold ~5K issues or so.

Moore does a very fine job of establishing his story in this first issue.  There’s no screwing around, no forays into the meaning of life/religion/the universe… None of that stuff.  He just lays out the story.  Two FBI agents (including a hot female agent who is a recovering sex addict) are tracking a serial killer who doesn’t just kill folks…. He cuts off their arms and heads and “carves them like tulips”.  It is heavily implied that this carving isn’t just figurative… The guy is actually making something like an ice sculpture, but one of the very nice things is that they do not show us anything.   A lot of lesser creators would have just jumped into showing the gore, but here it is implied and I appreciate that.

Crossed #2 – Review

By Garth Ennis (story), Jacen Burrows (art), Juanmar (colors)

The Story: The pack of survivors plan their next move. With most of the North American populace infected and migrating south for new victims the logical choice is to move northward, perhaps towards Alaska. But as the group prepares to make its move an enormous error is made and another member falls victim to the Crossed.

What’s Good? The survival instincts and rationale displayed by these survivors is very grounded in reality. Their plans are sound and the mistakes made (and the paid consequences) are unnerving, causing genuine frustration to the reader (in a good way).  The passage of time that’s been given (about a year on the run now), provides a more interesting picture of things as well.

The Bad? I still don’t care about any of these survivors. There’s just not enough pages or time devoted to them or their personalities. In my mind, they’re all fodder who may die at any moment. Too much time is spent discussing logistics and the nature of the Crossed, which I honestly don’t mind, but because of this we’re given no time to relate to the characters.

The biggest problem I have with this issue, however, is the insane amount of disgusting masturbatory references on display. I can see this happening on occasion, but it’s so over-the-top and so frequent that it comes off as being gratuitous just for gratuitous’ sake. It’s not shocking, just stupid.

Conclusion: The story progression is overpowered by a lot of unneeded sexual and masturbatory scenes. Skip this one.

Crossed #1 – Review

By Garth Ennis (Writer), Jacen Burrows (Art), and Juanmar (Colors)

The Story: The “crossed” are primal, psychotic humans with a taste for nothing but sex and extreme violence. Their numbers are growing as a band of survivors try to keep it together long enough to stay alive for another day. Simply put, the story is pretty much what The Walking Dead would probably be like if it was helmed by Garth Ennis instead of Robert Kirkman.

What’s Good: For what amounts to little more than a variation on the zombie genre at this point, Crossed still manages to come across as unique thanks to the extreme nature of those humans that have become “crossed.” Drawn in brutal, disturbing detail by Jacen Burrows, trust me when I say that you have never seen zombies behave quite like they do in this series debut. A single issue in and it’s readily apparent that this book aims to shock while also providing some heavy handed commentary on our cultural obsession with sex and violence.

What’s Not So Good: This book is completely devoid of the subtlety and human drama that compelling characters are born from (read The Walking Dead for that). I couldn’t name a single character in Crossed, but you better believe I could describe, in detail, the more outrageous things that happen. That’s why it’s really hard to tell where things will be going once the story actually advances beyond trying to survive. It can probably amount to more than just a string of graphic language and artwork, but it needs to happen sooner than later.

Conclusion: Crossed #1 does just enough to keep me around for a bit longer, but it is really nothing more than a comic version of an unrated gore flick. Fun if you can handle it, but far from being an essential read.

Grade: C

-Kyle Posluszny

A Second Opinion

I’ll readily admit that I’m reading this book just to see how far Ennis will push the moral envelope. This book is the highlight reel of the most disgusting parts of Garth Ennis’ magnum opus, Preacher. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to stomach Ennis’ sadistic side. Those in that camp feel right at home. If you’ve read The Boys or Preacher the graphic content shouldn’t surprise you (that much). If your only exposure to Ennis is Dan Dare, well, prepare to have your eyes raped.

Robert Kirkman fans: This is Walking Dead: Extreme Edition.

And I love it!

Grade: A-

– J. Montes