Rat Queens #1 & 2 by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch. Image, 2013.
Having never picked up Peter Panzerfaust, I was tragically unaware of Kurtis J. Wiebe, who adds a second ongoing series to his workload with this new take on a Dungeons & Dragons-esque universe. Unlike Skullkickers, which is Image’s other humorous take on fantasy role-playing tropes, Rat Queens is an attempt to create a universe that is internally self-consistent and yet bears many of the hallmarks of an active MMORPG — for example, what would a city-state really be like if it was constantly occupied by many bands of adventurers? Turns out, they might be more of a political liability than anything, especially once they’ve slain all of those pesky monsters who are just at the outskirts of town.
At the heart of the book are, of course, the Rat Queens themselves, a band of adventurers much like any other — they’ve got a sorcerer, a dwarf paladin, a rogue elf, and a pretty badass shaman-healer-warrior. They love drinking ale, fighting monsters, and fucking, and they’re damn good at all three. The fact that they’re all women seems pretty incidental. There’s a slight eye-candy element but it’s not overplayed, and there’s possibly some gentle gender politics just in the sex-positiveness of it all, but on the whole it’s not a big deal — rather like Brian Wood’s X-Men , another book that no longer feel the need to trumpet the fact that, oh yeah, girls can be the hero sometimes too.
Speaking of eye candy, though…if you’re into that sort of thing…you should probably go check out Rat Queens artist Roc Upchurch’s deviantart page. Upchurch came up through the videogame design side of the illustration world and did some small-press work for Mythic and the little-noticed Image series Vescell before landing this gig alongside rising star Wiebe. Like many Deviantart pages, his displays a very sexual fascination with the female form, albeit one that casts a much wider net in terms of race and body type than many pin-up artists. In Rat Queens, his talent for drawing women remains at the forefront — but he demonstrates that he can illustrate a range of motions and emotions than runs far beyond twerkin’ and come-hither glances.
Five Ghosts #6 by Frank J. Barbiere and Garry Brown with Lauren Affe. Image, 2013.
Earlier this year we were introduced to the swashbuckling Fabian Gray, a master-thief inhabited by the spirits of five literary archetypes — Archer, Detective, Wizard, Samurai, and Vampire — in the then-limted series Five Ghosts by Frank Barbiere and Mooneyham. The miniseries was successful enough for Image to roll the dice on an ongoing series, with Barbiere still behind the keyboard and Garry Brown picking up for Mooneyham on the bristol boards. I can’t say I’m as enamored with Brown’s visual stylings, but I’m confident that’s a matter of personal taste rather than perception of raw talent, as Brown is clearly competent visual storyteller with an eye for page design and a foundation in classic 20th century illustration. There’s an argument to be made that Brown is a better fit for this period adventure series than Mooneyham, because so many of his pages look like they could have been 1950s pulp paperback covers.
This first issue since the jump to ongoing is a one-and-done story, making for a good jumping on point even for those who skipped the first minseries, but it also sets up a larger plotline for the series moving forward. The story is exciting and the action sequences are well-drawn and thrillingly paced, but they do feel a bit like a succession of adventure tropes laid out by rote formula. The first series did a good job of not only taking full advantage of the high-concept premise but even deconstructing it; for this outing, Fabian’s unique powers are not treated in anything near as interesting a manner. I’ll need to see a few more issues to tell if this series will pan out into a fresh take on pulp adventure or end up as a mere transliteration of Ben 10 into a throwback setting.
Guardians of the Galaxy #8 by Brian Michael Bendis and Francesco Francavilla. Marvel, 2013.
I thought I had already dropped this title from my pull list, another casualty of my often invoked “if nothing is happening, why am I reading it?” rule, but this issue weaseled it’s way into my hold file nonetheless. I didn’t pick it up because Francesco Francavilla drew it. Now, I have no bones with Sara Pichelli. She draws the hell out of some space folk super-punching the crap out of some other space folk — but she doesn’t have the same power that Francavilla has to make me read something where I have essentially zero interest left in the writing or story. Francavilla is more closely associated with noir than anything, but look, he can draw space, too! His approach to deep space kind of riffs on elements of R-Type and Alien and incorporates some noir coloring and lighting effects, too, and the end result really captures the trapped in a metal coffin aspect of space travel that is essentially ignored in all spacebound superhero comics. If he was just drawing this series now, I would probably stick around just for the Groot and Rocket Raccoon moments and the shadowy art, but as this is, like most all of Francavilla’s Big Two work, a fill-in, I’ll be resuming my previously planned ignoring of this series starting with the next issue*.
The Sandman: Overture #1 by Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III with Dave Stewart. DC/Vertigo, 2013.
Ugggghhh, I never even read all of Sandman and this still made me all weepy-nostalgic. Neil Gaiman is a creator that I positively love to hate on, especially in his recent guise as an author of mystical-realist arcana for children; the thing is, he’s one of those guys that I kind of hate in the abstract, even though whenever I do pick up some of his work, be it Preludes & Nocturnes, American Gods or Coraline, I tend to love it. I kind of feel like he’s manipulating me, and all of us, that’s he figured out the perfect mix of Freudianism, the occult, and literary-self-reference to create mental catnip for folks who fancy themselves “outside of the mainstream,” which is everyone, if you were keeping count. GOD DAMN HIM AND HIS OVERLY PRECIOUS YET SICKENINGLY COMPELLING AUTHORIAL WAYS. See also: J.H. Williams III, still holding pole position in my Greatest-Comics-Artist Working power rankings**.
*Steve McNiven on the next issue though…he’s pretty good…damn this is exactly why Marvel switches around creators all the time, isn’t it?
**Would such a set of Power Rankings actually be something people want to see? Off the top of the dome I know Marcos Martin, Frank Quitely and Paul Pope would be on there…and there’s a whole question of whether it should be superhero artists only or all comics and then what constitutes Still Working? See, now I have to do this stupid list article now just to hash out all these mental questions. It’s always a regression to the Listicle, really.
disastercouch 