Pulp Friction #2 – Review

By: Mark Waid (story), Loston Wallace (pencils), Bob Wiacek (inks), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: The Spirit on a plane.

The Review: Four months—that’s the amount of time it took to get from the first issue of this (four-issue!) mini to the second.  And that’s only after a month or so seeing the issue solicited for release week after week until my local comic book shop gave up and redacted the title from their weekly newsletter entirely.  I don’t know if this is the consequence of a dual-publisher team-up or what, but it better not be a running pattern.

The problem with shipping delays is, even though they have nothing to do with the story itself, they still affect the story’s impact.  Ordinarily, each issue only has to have enough substance to carry a reader through the next month.  When you have an issue that must now carry four months’ worth of entertainment on its back (and possibly four more—God forbid), you’re only setting it up for failure.  It gets even worse when, as here, the issue isn’t outstanding anyway.

Lorna: Relic Wrangler – Review

By: Michah S. Harris (writer), Loston Wallace (art), Steve Downer (colors) & Nate Pride (letters)

The Story: Spunky/Sexy secret agent Lorna, tries to foil a secret plot against the United States capital.

What’s Good: Great and fun art!  There is certainly a place in comicdom for this kinda of good-girl pin-up-styled art.  Wallace’s Lorna is cute and happens to be wearingly shorts that are a little too short and tops a little too tight, but there’s nothing remotely trashy about her.  Trashy would be a state of mind and Lorna doesn’t have even an aroma of skank about her.

Another thing that you might love about the art in this issue is its vitality.  If you read any of my reviews on this site, you know that I’m a sucker for any type of art as long as the characters look alive.  Every panel in this issue just ripples with life and emotion and a lot of this is chalked up to a slightly cartoony feel that helps characters scrunch up their faces and give “eat-shit” looks in a way that is really difficult to do with a more realistic style.  Top notch coloring too!  I loathe over-rendered digital coloring, but this issue shows that you can do a couple gradations of color as long as you do them well.  Everything is bright and bouncy as hell.

The story itself isn’t awesome, but is fun.  To be candid, I didn’t fully understand the complex nature of the plot and who precisely the bad guys are, but all you really need to know is that secret agent Lorna is opposed by her lifelong nemesis Martha Madison (who has been one notch better than Lorna at everything in their lives) and that the plot somehow involves a stonemason’s/secret society-like guild.  It’s fun and the dialog is good.