The Squidder

by Ben Templesmith

I've been a fan of Ben Templesmith's art since he worked with Warren Ellis on Fell (or perhaps sooner, but I can't think of what that would have been), so I was curious to see what the results of his Kickstarter campaign were.  Never one to hide from the weird in the world, Templesmith created the world of The Squidder, and it is a pretty different one at that.

The future of the Squidder is one where the Earth has been taken over by squid-creatures from another dimension.  After years of rule and some weird genetic stuff, humanity is on its last legs.  Our hero, who never gets a name past Squidder, I don't think, is an augmented human, the last survivor of a push to get rid of the invaders.  Many years later, he ekes out a quiet, secretive existence, until the usual stuff happens, and he gets dragged back into the conflict.

I like this story, but I feel like it could have used some more time or space to develop.  I didn't feel like I knew the main character until the back half of the book, and much of what is going on can feel pretty obscure.  At the same time, I appreciate that Templesmith put a great deal of philosophy into this story (it can be read as a fight between collective action and individual thought), and of course, the artwork is phenomenal.  We don't see enough from Templesmith these days...

Occupy Comics #1

with contributions from Joshua Hale Fialkov, Joseph Infurnari, JM DeMatteis, Mike Cavallaro, Douglas Rushkoff, Dean Haspiel, Ales Kot, Tyler Crook, Ben Templesmith, Ronald Wimberly, Joshua Dysart, Kelly Bruce, Allen Gladfelter, Alan Moore, Matt Pizzolo, and Ayhan Hayrula

The timing of this new anthology comic is very odd.  I understand that the book was first funded through Kickstarter, and then solicited through Diamond by Black Mask comics, and that all of these things take time, but the Occupy Wall Street protestors were kicked out of Zucotti Park back at the end of 2011.  Sadly, the movement has appeared to have dissipated since then, which makes me wonder just what purpose this book, which promises to donate profits to "Occupy related initiatives", is really going to serve.

Still, I like anthology comics, and I like political discourse, so I thought this was worth picking up.  It's really a very earnest little comic, with a couple of nice pieces.  Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari's bit about the birth of the labour movement is nice.  I also enjoyed Matt Pizzolo and Ayhan Hayrula's strip about sampling Occupy and it's opposite, the Tea Party, and finding that they are neither of them accurately portrayed in the mainstream media.

Ales Kot and Tyler Crook have the best comic in this book, which shows the value of non-professional "citizen journalists".  It's the most linear and clear thing I think Kot has written yet.

I will admit to not really reading Alan Moore's lengthy piece on the history of political satire in comics. At least I think that's what it's about - I lost interest quickly, which also explains why I have a few barely read issues of Dodgem Logic lying around.

Reading this book, I couldn't help but think I was examining a historical document, which is kind of unfortunate.  There was a lot that needed to be said by the Occupy Movement, but that voice feels to be missing from our day-to-day discourse.  Maybe this book will inspire some of it to come back?  Perhaps a couple of years ago...

The CBLDF Presents Liberty Annual 2012

Written by Jonathan Hickman, Andy Diggle, Howard Chaykin, Steven T. Seagle, Joe Keatinge, James Robinson, James Asmus, Richard Starkings, Chris Roberson, Chris Giarrusso, David Hine, Brandon Graham, Jim McCann, Kieron Gillen, Terry Moore, and Robert Kirkman
Art by Jonathan Hickman, Ben Templesmith, Sina Grace, Marco Cinello, Chynna Clugston-Flores, J. Bone, Takeshi Miyazawa, Ian Churchill, Roger Langridge, Gabriel Bá, Chris Giarrusso, Doug Braithwaite, Brandon Graham, Janet Lee, Nate Bellegarde, Terry Moore, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn

I'm always impressed with the line-up that Image and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund are able to put together for these Liberty Annuals.  There is an impressive list of creators involved in this book, and while the stories are all very short, there is a lot of stuff to love about this book.

First and foremost, there is a Walking Dead story featuring the Governor.  This story doesn't really fit into the book's theme of preserving free speech, but at the same time, it is so rare for there to be side-projects featuring the characters from this series, that for many, this alone should be worth the purchase price.  Basically, in this story, we learn about the origin of the Governor's collection of fish tanks (seen in last week's episode of the TV show).

The rest of this book does deal with the free speech or liberty themes, in a variety of ways.  David Hine and Doug Braithwaite preview their upcoming Image series Storm Dogs by giving us some of the history of the science fiction world it is going to be set in - this series looks like it's going to be very good.

Andy Diggle and Ben Templesmith give us a great story wherein the Devil appears in front of a trio of young people, only to learn that the people of the 21st century have moved beyond many of the concepts that once gave him entry into peoples' minds.  If only this were more true...

Jim McCann and Janet Lee tell a nice story of a conversation between an older woman and a young man who has what can be referred to as an 'unconventional family', although the theme of their conversation is that it's not all that unconventional.

James Robinson and J. Bone totally grabbed my attention with their short story of an American soldier who has come to Canada to escape something, and is being pursued by two men who are probably something other than men.  The story is tagged as a prologue to 'The Saviors'; I hope this means that these two gentlemen are working on a new series together.  Bone's art is wonderful - blocky, and coloured only in green, it doesn't look at all like his all-ages work.

Joe Keatinge and Chynna Clugston Flores share a nice little story about a family movie theatre.  James Asmus and Takeshi Miyazawa give us a great short story about the things that people do when they know that the world is about to end.  Beyond that, there are some terrific one- and two-page strips by the rest of the creators listed above, and a beautiful Gabriel Bá cover.

This book is well worth buying, even if the proceeds didn't go to support the CBLDF.  Go get it.

Singularity 7

by Ben Templesmith

It's always a good idea, when one can, to pick up a comic by Ben Templesmith.  For the longest time, I only knew him as the artist of such great series as Fell and the Dead Space comics, although I've recently come to enjoy his work as a writer on 30 Days of Night, Welcome to Hoxford, and Wormwood.

Singularity 7 was a series he did about five years ago.  It's a science fiction horror comic, set in a world where alien nanites have caused massive transformations to the landscape, and have sent any uninfected humans underground to hide.  Usually, when these nanites make contact with a person, they disassemble him or her, although some people seem to be immune, and manage to reprogram the microscopic machines.

This series has a group of such humans attempting to deliver a type of poison into the nanite network, although to do so, they have to travel to the Dead City, and avoid the Gosiodos, the footsoldiers of the Singularity, the entity that appears to be running the network.

This comic is pretty dark and violent.  It reminded me of the future scenes in the Terminator movies, with the remaining humans up against an unbeatable enemy.  This is a pretty decent story, and while the art is as wonderful and bizarre as Templesmith's work usually is, it's not his best writing.

24 Seven Vol. 2

Edited by Ivan Brandon

This anthology is the second of two graphic novels that contain only short stories featuring robots.  The trick, or the conceit, is that the robots are the only inhabitants (except, in one story which also has gorillas) of the planet, and they tend to live what we regard as normal lives.  The book is somehow connected to the NYC Mech series that Image put out in the middle of the decade, but these books feature a rich variety of talented writers and artists.

When I read the first volume, I complained that the stories were pretty ordinary, and didn't do much with the robotic concept.  People whined about their jobs or had break-ups, and the fact that they were robots seemed to exist solely in the visual aspects of the comic.  That is not the same with this volume.

Instead, many of the stories deal head-on with the notion that the protagonists are mechanical in nature.  There is a story by Carla Speed MacNeil and Bruno D'Angelo that has the main character slowly trading in his parts so that the he can become a dancer, although it means giving up his family's legacy.  Similarly, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Andy MacDonald tell a story where the hero literally carries his emotional baggage around with him, attached to his body.

There are lots of great stories here by a very impressive list of creators, including Gene Ha (who plays around with a homage to Little Nemo in Slumberland), Fábio Moon, Michael Avon Oeming, Francesco Francavilla, Gabriel Bá, Juan Doe, Rafael Albuquerque, Ben Templesmith, Dave Johnson, Jason Aaron, Fiona Staples, Jason Latour, and Frazer Irving.

This is a very coherent and enjoyable anthology, which covers a number of different genres.  Recommended.

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse Vol. 1: Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer

by Ben Templesmith

It's pretty easy to describe this book accurately with only one sentence:  A corpse-possessing worm, his clockwork robot drinking buddy, the ghost of a police officer, and a hired exotic dancer/interdimensional gateway guardian have to figure out why people who use erectile dysfunction medication are being ripped apart by demonic monsters.

See - it's a pretty straight forward concept.  Basically, Templesmith just goes nuts with this book, creating a few interesting and memorable characters, and then rolling with the situation.  It's by no means a brilliant or particulary thoughtful comic, but it is a lot of fun.

The big draw to any Templesmith comic is his art.  His brand of digitally coloured and manipulated pencil drawings works well here.  I'd recommend this book for people who have gotten bored with Hellblazer.

Groom Lake

Written by Chris Ryall
Art by Ben Templesmith

I'd wanted to pick up the individual issues that made up this series when they first came out, but I was put off by the $4 price (not that $20 for a trade is better - thank you used bookstores!).  I'm glad I got around to reading this, as it's a lot of fun, and quite pretty.

Groom Lake is named for the location of Area 51, but the story starts elsewhere, with the abduction one night of a man in New Hampshire.  Some two years later, his twenty-year old son is contacted by agents for the US Government, and they take him to Area 51 to see his father, long presumed dead, who had been experimented on horribly by the little gray aliens that anyone who has ever seen a copy of Communion would be familiar with.

As it turns out, our young hero, Karl Bauer, has altered genes after generations of alien experimentation on his family.  All of his experimented upon forebears have died from exploding genitals, and the aliens want to study Karl.  The government has been working with these aliens, to develop genetic weapons.  It turns out that all of your favourite aliens from the movies - the Blobs, ET - have been living at Area 51, assisting with black ops projects.

The story is a little predictable - Karl escapes with Archibold, the pilot for the little gray aliens, and all sorts of stuff happens.  It's the execution of this plot, and the little details, that make the book so good.  The aliens are obsessed with human genitalia (lacking any of their own), and like chocolate and cigarettes.

Templesmith's work is as good as it always is here, and Ryall shows a good ear for dialogue.  This is a good quick read.

Welcome to Hoxford

by Ben Templesmith

I've long enjoyed Templesmith's work on books like Fell, Dead Space and the 30 Days of Night series (where his art is much better than the writing), but I wasn't too familiar with his written work.  His 30 Days of Night: Red Snow book didn't really work out for me, but I could see enough there to know that it was worth giving him another shot with this book.  And I'm pleased that I did.

Welcome to Hoxford is a twisted little piece of work.  Hoxford Correctional Facility and Mental Institution is a privately run (by a Russian corporation) institute of last resort for incurably insane violent offenders.  The men that are sent to this place are to remain there for the rest of their lives.  They are given no visitors, and the American government has basically washed its hands of them.  What no one knows is that it is a front for a group of werewolves who have immigrated to America.

Our hero (if that term can apply in any possible way) is Raymond Delgado, an insane murderer with delusions of godhood.  His fellow inmates include cannibals, pedophiles, and necrophiliacs.  So basically, it's not a very nice comic.  Instead, it's a gloriously deranged story where horrible people get what's coming to them from more horrible creatures, at least until Raymond starts to fight back.

As usual, Templesmith's art is terrific, if you like his style.  I think I need to track down some of his other solo work now, as I definitely want to read more.

30 Days of Night: Red Snow

by Ben Templesmith

So once again, I'm dipping my toes in 30 Days of Night water, and find this outing to be better than some of the others.  A lot of that has to do with Templesmith's art, even if his writing is a little stiff here, and too constrained by the dictates of the franchise.

This story is set in 1941, somewhere north and cold along the Russian front.  It follows a group of German soldiers, a group of Soviet soldiers (with a random British guy accompanying them), and a Russian peasant family who live in the area.  These disparate groups end up in the same place, at the same time that a bunch of vampires appear and attack.  The humans have to work (uneasily) together to try to survive.

As usual with these books, (with the exception of the brilliant 30 Days Til Death series by David Lapham), the vampires are total ciphers, and the people don't get much more development.  Russians and Germans hate each other?  Shocking!  Peasants afraid of Soviets?  What they needed was a good long political argument when they were all trapped in the tunnels together.

And really - again with everyone hiding in basements?  There was too much here that was borrowed from the first volume, and not enough of Templesmith's usual madness.  Still and all, it's a decent read.

Choker #1

Written by Ben McCool
Art by Ben Templesmith

I think even with a different artist, this would feel too much like an issue of Fell. Ben McCool (whose name keeps getting tossed around like it should be familiar - maybe it's a Brit thing) has started this new series at Image, and he owes Warren Ellis at least a drink, if not more. The book is about Johnny Jackson, a disgraced and discarded police detective in Shotgun City, who has been doing the PI thing for the last few years, until he is given an opportunity by his former boss to return to the force; all he has to do is track down an escaped drug dealer he had put away the first time around.

The set-up is familiar from tons of futuristic neo-noir comics and movies. Shotgun City is highly reminiscent of Snowtown, Heavenside, or any other post-urban dystopian metropolis written by someone aping Ellis. There's some kind of body-modification movement, called Man Plus (don't they sell pills like that on late-night TV?) and a lot of people in wheelchairs. To be honest, the story is not doing it for me.

Templesmith's art is as good as it always is. I've really developed a liking for his style, and find that I don't think of Ted McKeever as often now when I read his work. I feel like Templesmith does his best to elevate the material here, but in the end, this is a pretty derivative piece of work. I would much rather read another issue of Fell....

30 Days of Night

Written by Steve Niles
Art by Ben Templesmith

I've come at this series rather backwards, having previously read David Lapham's wonderful mini-series, and the trade with the only so-so Matt Fraction story. I figured it was time to check this out from the beginning, and see what the original premise is.

It's a good idea. A group of vampires decide that a town in Alaska that doesn't receive sunlight for one month of the year would be a good place to be able to eat and rampage in the open, and so they go there. The local sheriff and his wife offer up the only resistance available. That's basically it.

What I've noticed about my few forays into this series, is that there is a lot of politics involved in being a vampire, and the older, more established ones will always tell the younger ones what to do. This leads to fighting, which seems to be the core of the drama for this series.

Templesmith's art is at it's messiest best, and while some pages are not particularly clear, they all carry his unique, yet Ted McKeever inspired, approach. This is a decent comic, although I'm not sure I'm in a huge rush to pick up the rest of the volumes. They'd have to be pretty inexpensive, as I don't feel like there's much here that's new.

30 Days of Night: Bloodsucker Tales

Written by Steve Niles and Matt Fraction
Art by Kody Chamberlain and Ben Templesmith

As I've said on here before, I've never really bothered with the 30 Days of Night series, and only ever bought the mini-series done by David Lapham because he's on my 'buy everything you can' list.

Well, parts of the concept interested me, so I decided to poke around through what was out there. Around the same time, I saw the solicitation for the tpb of Juarez, written by Matt Fraction (another person on my 'buy everything (non-Marvel)' list). Then, I found this on ebay, collecting both the Juarez story, and one other. Seeing as they are vastly different, I'll review them separately.

'Dead Billy Dead' is written by the series creator, and I suppose there's nothing wrong with it. It's about some guy who gets turned into a vampire, and basically falls afoul of some creepy professor. It's a good enough story I suppose, but it's not the type of thing that would ever get me into this franchise. The art is sketchy and a little hard to follow in places, but is generally serviceable.

'Juarez', on the other hand, is a mess, but a glorious mess. This is the type of Matt Fraction that I like best - where the ideas are flowing quicker than the story can handle. It's mostly about the missing girls in Juarez, and how one investigator - Lex Nova - thinks it is the work of vampires, as does the Zero Family Circus - a group of deranged vampires, looking for their lost Uncle Zero. Their stories collide, along with a faithless priest, and some Mexican whores. Again, all the elements needed for a great story.

Things don't really coalesce until the last chapter, which is really a prologue to the story. Lots of things don't make sense right until the very end, prompting the reader to turn back to the first page and start again. Things are further confused by Templesmith's art, which I always enjoy, but can't always follow.

'Juarez' made this a worthwhile purchase, and now has me interested in other writers who have dabbled in Nile's universe. 'Red Snow' is next on my to-buy list, if it's any good.

Dead Space #6

Written by Antony Johnston
Art by Ben Templesmith

This is a good example of a series that started out very strong, but kind of petered out. I suppose that's to be expected though; it's a series that exists to set up a video game, and so has an end-goal in mind from the beginning.

The beginning was great though. Johnston gives us a claustrophobic space station that is divided over the discovery of a strange alien obelisk. It means a great deal to the Unificationists (Scientologists?) on the station, and this leads to all sorts of problems, as the cultists begin to experience strange visitations from the dead. From there, we have a good horror mystery story for a few issues, before the series finally degrades into a zombie-Aliens (more James Cameron than Ridley Scott) action movie.

That the series is so good is due to Johnston's skill at setting up a believable futuristic setting (everyone should be reading Wasteland). Templesmith is a master at designing a sinister atmosphere, and his choice to never directly portray the monster/zombie/alien things makes them much more creepy.

(Note: This is not the cover to #6, but I couldn't find it anywhere....)