Voodoo #6 – Review

By: Josh Williamson (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: My only advice to you, Voodoo, is talk it out before you walk it out.

The Review: It’s always intriguing when these creative shake-ups happen in comics.  Sure, the reasons why someone departs from a project can have a lot of drama (see John Rozum’s exit from Static Shock), but to me it’s more interesting to look at who’s being brought in to replace him, and why.  Maybe this is only a DC thing—though I tend to doubt it—but I’m amazed by how frequently their titles lose great writers, only to get filled in by terribly mediocre ones.

Perhaps it’s a bit too soon and too harsh to say so now, but Voodoo seems to be one of those cases.  True, it’s not like Ron Marz was a particularly visionary storyteller on this title.  And I certainly understand, given Williamson’s success on Xenoholics, why someone might have thought it’d be a good idea to bring him in to this sci-fi, alien-populated series.  But when you think of the general tone of Xenoholics, which many have described as “quirky,” “tongue-in-cheek,” or “a white trash CONTACT,” it’s clear Williamson’s sensibilities are completely at odds with the extraterrestrial thriller Marz had been going for all along.

For those of you who weren’t convinced last issue, the dialogue has indeed taken a permanent turn for the worse.  If you can, take a look at this issue’s cover (courtesy of Paulo Siqueira and Rod Reis), and pay attention to the characters’ faces.  Despite the fact Voodoo, Black Jack, and Fallon are all battle-hardened, highly experienced soldiers who take a licking and keep on ticking, they all sport the same childishly astonished expressions at the rain of rubble around them.  That same inappropriate immaturity has infected their speech.

At one point, Black Jack and Fallon’s banter reads like the preening of two middle-school boys trying to sound like high school gangsters: “Just because you’re back in armor doesn’t mean you got skills, desk jockey.”  “Oh, yeah?  Watch me go bust out our prisoner!”  If that isn’t out of character enough, Williamson also seems to forget that “Skinny” (the hybrid Daemonite from #3) is in fact a no-nonsense, practically brooding alien sergeant, choosing instead to play up his redneck appearance: “You dummy!  You can’t go running to the war council thinking they will save you.  They’re still gonna punish you!  Hahahahahaha[!]”

Voodoo #5 – Review

By: Josh Williamson (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: Don’t be hating on me, brother—we’re all of the same people, right?

The Review: I think it’s only right that I tell you how much I hate research.  When I studied journalism in college, that was always my least favorite part of the writing process.  I’d read the news, and enjoy that, but I hated the meticulousness of having to sift through mountains of information to find the details I needed.  And now that life’s gotten so busy, I don’t even keep up with the news very well.

So it should be to no one’s surprise that I had no idea a new writer was taking over this title from Ron Marz up until I got this issue.  It hardly mattered, though; I could tell, just from reading through the first half, that something was amiss.  The thought that kept running through my head was, Man, Marz is having something of an off day, isn’t he?  So it goes without saying that the change in writing doesn’t feel like it’s for the better.

First off, Williamson is a great deal more liberal in his use of narration than Marz ever was.  Williamson fills whole panels with text, mostly exposition.  More problematically, he gives it all a whiny, plaintive tone this series never sported before now.  You can hear it wafting from Fallon’s recounting of her background: “Things were easier when I was a Black Razor.  Becoming the FBI liaison and tracking down extraterrestrial threats looked like a promotion.  Not I see it was really a punishment.  This job was my whole life.”

The dialogue has gotten more emotionally charged, too.  Marz always impressed me with his choice to make the cast as restrained in expressing their emotions as possible.  Whether you’re talking Voodoo or Agent Fallon or even Green Lantern, nearly every character on this series is a soldier or peace officer of some kind, so holding back their true feelings made a lot of sense.  I don’t know if this is Williamson’s style or if it’s the climactic nature of the issue, but it seems like everyone has decided to let all their inside stuff out: “You’re an abomination!  You must be annihilated!”  “You will not ruin…my mission!”  “Are you insane?!”  “All this power the Black Razors gave me—all that I can do—and I can’t stop a single woman half my size?!”

Voodoo #4 – Review

By: Ron Marz (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: It takes a special woman to pull off a security breach in purple.

The Review: I make it a practice of reading over my past reviews of a series when writing the latest one, mostly to make sure I don’t repeat anything from before.  As I read my reviews of Voodoo, it struck me that I never once used the word “hero” in describing the titular character.  It made me realize that while she may be the protagonist of this comic, and a hero for her race, she’s no hero to us, considering she’s essentially plotting our doom.

In fact, as each issue goes by, she becomes less and less admirable in her motives and behavior.  While we already know she’s willing to kill to get the job done, there seems to be little logic to when she chooses to do so and when she doesn’t.  Why, for example, does she choose to poison a rather pathetic-looking tech guy, but merely smothers two armed guards to unconsciousness?

Voodoo’s villainy makes her no less intriguing a character, however.  We don’t know her exact role in this alien invasion that’s presumably coming down the pike, but we see now that it involves gathering information on Earth’s superheroes.  This may explain all the pains she and her fellow “hybrids” have taken to remain on the down-low; a full-on attack risks extreme prejudicial retaliation by the Kryptonians, Amazons, cyborgs, and caped crusaders of the world.

We also learn a bit more about Voodoo’s identity.  Last issue indicated she’s a hybrid of human and alien DNA, so there may be a genuine connection between the Priscilla Kitaen who “disappeared” at age four after a house fire which consumed her mother and the Priscilla Kitaen stealing top-secret files now.  If so, can this mean her mother was genuine human while her absent father was of a different race entirely?  Can it also mean Piscilla had something to do with the fire which led to her mother’s death in the first place?

Interesting stuff, but too slowly paced for my taste.  After four issues, it still feels like the story’s just starting to get itself together, while some titles have already wrapped up their first arcs.  This issue pretty much repeats a bunch of the data we’ve deduced about Voodoo already, and except for the bits mentioned above, offers little new information.  And we still don’t know how her plot connects with the glowing, blue creatures antagonizing Grifter in his own title.

Voodoo #3 – Review

By: Ron Marz (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: Who ya gonna call?  Green Lantern!

The Review: The idea of aliens taking over the world from the inside has been around for practically as long as the very notion of aliens.  Invasion of the Body Snatchers established the default mode of such extraterrestrials: using their advanced science to imitate our physical forms perfectly, yet largely unable to replicate our complex, often inscrutable emotions.

While the aliens in question here can at least give the appearance of human emotion, it’s quite clear none of it has rubbed on them permanently.  For Voodoo in particular, it’s hard to tell where in the moral spectrum she falls, human or otherwise.  Last issue, she showed reluctance to kill Agent Fallon, who she knew posed an imminent threat to her, yet here, she doesn’t hesitate to give trucker “Big Willie” a fatal thrashing for coming onto her after giving her a ride.

Voodoo and her comrades may have no love for humanity, but they have to acknowledge our resourcefulness.  Her intelligence gathering has revealed that the agency Fallon works for knows a great deal more about the impending invasion than expected, but this doesn’t seem to bug the space invaders much.  Whatever their plans for conquest are, they seem pretty committed to it, no matter how many setbacks or obstacles come up.

They’re even prepared to go through a Green Lantern if need be.  No, neither the cocky Hal or aggressive Guy show up this issue.  Instead, we get Kyle Rayner, who radiates good humor even as he generates a train construct to smash through their HQ wall (“Little engine that could.”).  Marz writes a superb Kyle, giving him one gem of a line after another, my favorite being his response to “Skinny’s” epithet of “Oan scum!”  “Dude, I’m from California…”

Voodoo #2 – Review

By: Ron Marz (writer), Sami Basri & Hendry Prasetya (artists), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: One minute you’re making love, the other you’re at each other’s throats.

The Review: Some people gave this title’s debut issue a hard time for its starting choice of setting, and perhaps this turned off readers from the series early on.  That seems an unjust gut reaction to the storytelling choices Marz is making here, since at its backbone, the title has much more to it than a lurid excuse for sexually-exploitive scenes.  But now that we’ve gotten past that hump, we can set aside that distracting controversy and speak to the issue on its own merits.

Voodoo seemed a little one-dimensional when we first saw her—for good reason, as she spent most the issue dancing and taking her clothes off (not exclusively in that order).  The most you could surmise was that she was an alien trying to fit in among humans.  Here, she makes it clear that assumption may be true, but “…I’m not one of them.  I’ll never be one of them.  And I’ll make them pay.”  Clearly, she has a purpose for being here, and it may not bode well for us.

Her vengeful agenda may surprise you, likely because we’ve been conditioned by the likes of Superman, Starfire, and Martian Manhunter to believe that all outer space visitors just want to be like us.  To have a protagonist who not only doesn’t care about acceptance, but who may actively seek our destruction certainly sends this title in an interesting new direction.

We don’t know what motivates Voodoo (certainly not our moral code, which she dismisses), but clearly, it’s enough to keep her courting danger for the sake of telepathic data-gleaning.  Though she knows her enemies are onto her, she not only sticks around, she actually goes into the lion’s den, usurping the identity of Agent Fallon’s partner (both in business and lovemaking), whom she just killed last issue.  A twisted move by any standard, but she seems completely impenitent.

Voodoo #1 – Review

By: Ron Marz (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: She literally knows what dirty thoughts you’re thinking.

The Review: Women in comics are a hot topic lately, and with this DC relaunch, the focus has landed on their fictional portrayals.  Last week, both Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws came under fire for putting their female stars into over-sexualized scenes (Catwoman’s last panel alone would have made you blush even in a men’s locker room).  With all the teasers showing its stripper-heavy first issue, Voodoo seemed well on its way to winning the prize for anti-feminism.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let me just say: strippers are a fact of life.  You may see them as a moral travesty of varying degrees, but you can’t deny their existence, and it would be very false for fiction to do otherwise.  The important thing in writing them, just like writing any other class or type of people, is to make sure they don’t become mere instruments in the story, brought in just for the sake of having them.  Like anything else, if you write them well, they’re fair game.

And Marz writes them well.  Yes, you get plenty of bare skin and erotic positions in the first few pages, but as the issue moves along, he makes it clear all that stuff is mere gloss, and underneath is a living, breathing plot with conflict and tension that has absolutely nothing to do with an exploitive industry.  And anyway, by the end, the strip club setting becomes a non-issue; it is only one, temporary stop on this storyline’s train track.

Witchblade #123 – Review

By Ron Marz (Writer) and Stjepan Sejic (Artist)

Some Thoughts Before The Review: I’m honestly a bit worried about the latest issue of Witchblade. I’ve really enjoyed the supernatural murder mystery arc that’s been going on the last few issues, but I can’t shake the sinking feeling that the conclusion might end up being less than satisfying. And why is that? Because the big “January War ” (or will it be “March War” because of the delays?) storyline  that Top Cow has been hyping up is on the horizon. And it leaves me thinking that some of Witchblade #123‘s story might feel a bit rushed through just to make room for any set up that might be needed for the next arc. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve definitely talked about Ron Marz rushing to conclusions before…

The Story: Sara Pezzini goes head to head with an entity known as Marinette, a strange and powerful voodoo spirit known as a “loa.” The battle reveals that there are forces at work possibly more powerful than the Witchblade and more sinister than the loa. Meanwhile, the journalist Gretch mulls over what to do with her photos of the Witchblade in action, considering that Sara saved her life. Also in the issue, Dani decides to confront the person responsible for the stress plaguing one of her students.

What’s Good: As it turns out, the latest Witchblade is about as far from a conclusion as you can possibly get, even if it does bring about a few satisfying plot resolutions. And that readers, is a good thing. I’ll tell you why. The storyline (and battle) involving the voodoo spirit is surprisingly engaging since it seems to only scratch the surface of the bigger plot being developed. In addition, the developments in Dani’s portion of the issue are somewhat surprising, given how she is usually relegated to second fiddle status. Couple that with some great visuals, courtesy of the always impressive Stjepan Sejic, and you have one heck of an entertaining issue of Witchblade that works well in service to both the present and future of the series.

What’s Not So Good: A few things bother me in Witchblade #123. The first thing is that Dani’s reaction at the end of the book seems a bit uncharacteristic, seeing as how she is usually written. While I wouldn’t be surprised to find that something else is going on in that plot thread, it feels somewhat odd for the time being. The second thing that bothers me is that Ron Marz seemed to push the engaging murder investigation by the wayside in order to make way for more action. Now don’t get me wrong, I always like seeing Sejic given time to shine, it just left me feeling as though things progressed at a pace that felt far too fast, considering how the story has been something of a slow burn up until this latest chapter.

Conclusion: I consider Witchblade #123 to be a very pleasant surprise. It managed to exceed my expectations while successfully sowing the seeds for the future in a very interesting way. I look forward to seeing what happens next. As such, consider Witchblade #123 to be well worth picking up.

Grade: B

-Kyle Posluszny