Finder: Third World

by Carla Speed McNeil

I am a huge fan of Carla Speed McNeil's Finder, having come late to the title after Dark Horse published a couple of very handsome omnibus editions.  She's described her masterpiece as "indigenous science fiction", and that's very much on display in this graphic novel.

Third World follows her main character, Jaeger, through three loosely structured segments of story.  In the first, he's in Anvard, a gigantic domed city, working as a courier for a delivery company.  We follow him through a few of his odder jobs, including his helping an old woman find her way to her family.  The stories work well together to give us an idea of the depth of planning McNeil has put into this world.

The second story has Jaeger lost, for the first time, in an open environment town called Third World, among many other names.  In this place, he meets a few other Ascians (the nomadic people who adopted him), although they are not of his tribe.  This section addresses issues of indigenous land rights, artistic representation, and respect for burial rights.  It also gives us a dramatic look into Jaeger's role as a Sin-Eater among his people.

The final, shortest, section, has Jaeger turn up in Javecek, another domed city that is known for the sheer number of infectious diseases that inhabit it.  Here, Jaeger is exposed, and infected with a citizen's cancer, as a way of healing her.  The story ends with him being put in a difficult position by his employers.

McNeil's work is brilliant.  Her art is fantastic, and with this book being in colour (a Finder first), she is able to really expand on the depth of her world.  The copious explanatory notes at the back of the book really enhance the reading experience, as there is so much about this world that cannot be explained through the comics pages alone.

I did first read these stories in Dark Horse Presents when they were serialized, but reading them together in this format puts things in a different light.  First, I was a little surprised to see that there wasn't really a clear narrative through this whole book.  I also felt the ending was more unsettled than I would have liked, but knowing that there are new stories coming out in DHP right now helps rectify that.  The truth is that Finder is all about journeys, so in many ways, it makes sense that Jaeger's tale doesn't wrap up in easy segments.

I was going to wait for the next trade, but reading this makes me want to track down the new DHP issues (and reread the Omnibuses).

Smoke/Ashes

Written by Alex De Campi
Art by Igor Kordey, Milton, Felipe Sobreiro, Carla Speed McNeil, Richard Pace, Dan McDaid, Mack Chatter, Colleen Doran, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alice Duke, Alem Curin, Jesse Hamm, James Smith, and RM Guéra

In 2013, Dark Horse published Smoke and Ashes in one volume, a nicely designed and chunky hunk of comics that has given me a lot of pleasure this week.  The two stories, both written by Alex De Campi, were separated by about seven years in their publication, with the second being the sequel to the first.

I decided it would be best to discuss each story separately, and to take a bit of a break between reading the two stories.

Smoke

I'd meant to pick this story up a number of times over the years, but I never saw more than the first issue, and didn't want to get swept up in a story I wouldn't be able to finish.  I'm glad I waited, as this was a very satisfying reading experience.

The story is set in a slightly into the future London (which, coincidentally, is more or less now, but would have been the future when De Campi wrote the story).  England is just about completely broke, and the IMF is poised to put their own measures in place to fix things.  A man named Lauderdale, who has the ear of the buffoonish Prime Minister, has a plan to fix things, and to profit for himself in the process.

His plot involves the kidnapping of the President of OPEC by an unwitting group of militant overweight people who want to use him as a bargaining chip in their quest for free plastic surgery in Argentina.  While the President is out of pocket, the plan is for OPEC to place England under a fuel embargo, which the government will be able to use to make a fortune on the futures market.

There are a couple of people who might be able to stop Lauderdale's plan, so he has them assassinated by a pair of freelancers who work for the government.  What he doesn't know is that one of his two targets is a close friend to Rupert Cain, the albino assassin he sent after the other target.  When Cain figures out what's happened, he makes it his business to avenge his friend.  Along the way, a journalist, Katie Shah, ends up working with him, at great personal expense.

The story is complicated, and I haven't mentioned the inclusion of a reporter who is covering the whole thing, the shadowy cabal that has been running England since the Second World War, nor the complicated relationship between Cain and his friend's daughter.  De Campi really packs a lot into the hundred and sixty pages that make up this story.

Things never feel complicated though, and Igor Kordey does a great job of helping keep things straight.  I've been a big fan of Kordey's work for a long time now (if all you've ever seen of his stuff is his New X-Men, you need to look at the rest of his body of work), so I really liked seeing what he did here.  Some of the action sequences, like the one where a group of killers try to take Cain out at a train station from the opposite platform, are incredibly impressive.

Ashes

Ashes is a very different beast than Smoke.  There was some sort of controversy about it involving Kickstarter and a falling out with the first artist De Campi worked with, but I don't remember what that was all about, and don't really see it as relevant to discussing the book.

It opens a few years after the events of Smoke.  London is not in great shape, but Katie Shah is even worse off.  After her involvement in the previous story, she's been effectively blacklisted in the field of journalism, and she's taken to drinking and sleeping with awful men.

In America, the body of No Face, the cyborg assassin from Smoke, is inadvertently given access to the Internet, and he transfers his consciousness just about everywhere.  All No Face wants is to get back at Rupert Cain, and when Katie calls him on a cellphone, Cain is back on the grid.

In surveillance-mad London, there is really nowhere to hide, so Cain and Shah go on the run, leaning on an old military connection of Cain's for help.  As the story progresses, we learn that Cain had a connection to No Face from one of his first missions.  We also learn, once again, that the people in charge of the world are pretty terrible.

This story felt less focused than Smoke, as De Campi develops characters in minor roles, like the pregnant widow of the first soldier killed by No Face.  She also builds up some interesting ideas, such as stem cell-grown pork farms that don't have any animals, which are tangential to the story at best.

This story was drawn by a very large number of talented artists.  It was cool to see an up-and-comer like Dan McDaid working alongside artists like RM Guera, Colleen Doran, Bill Sienkiewicz, and the fantastic Carla Speed McNeil (who has a series with De Campi coming at Image).  The transitions between artists could be jarring at times, but overall, this is a lovely book.

De Campi has not written a lot, but hers is a name that I'm seeing more and more often, from her upcoming Image work to her Grindhouse series at Dark Horse.  She's definitely a very talented writer, and I'm glad I've finally gotten around to reading her seminal work.

Bad Houses

Written by Sara Ryan
Art by Carla Speed McNeil

I knew I wanted to read Bad Houses just on the strength of artist Carla Speed McNeil's involvement, but I was not prepared on any level for how good this book is.

Bad Houses is set in Failin, a small town in Oregon that has seen better days.  It's main industry, the Faithful Angus Brewery has been closed for years, and young people seem to be in a hurry to get out.  The story is centred around Cat's Matchless Estate Sales, which organizes and runs estate sales as the town's aging population dwindles.

Cat runs the business along with her son Lewis, who is just out of high school (I assume) and is learning the ropes.  He meets Anne at one of the sales.  She's an artsy high school student who feels very deeply the connection that people have to objects.  Part of that comes from her mother, Danica, who is a hoarder.  Danica meets AJ when he admits his mother to the old age home where she works, and they begin a relationship.  The other important member of the book's cast is Fred, a grumpy antique shop owner, who has a connection to Cat and Lewis's absent father.

Writer Sara Ryan uses an interesting approach to telling this story, using a third person narrator who sometimes steps into the characters' heads to help explain their thinking, and at other times leaving the heavy lifting to McNeil.  All of these characters are complex and very well-realized, and after reading through the book's hundred and fifty pages, I felt that I knew them so well I'd been reading about them for ages.

This book explores our relationships with stuff as well as with other people, and has a good understanding of just how much emotion, hope, and memory can be invested in the things that we own.  It also looks at how hard it can be to share some of our most personal inner stuff with others.

McNeil is an incredible cartoonist, and it's nice to see her portray a more everyday world than the one she has created in her superb Finder graphic novels (which I cannot recommend strongly enough).  I really wish that McNeil was more prolific, because her work is so strong.

Dark Horse Presents #21

Written by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Michael Avon Oeming, Geoffrey Thorne, Neil Gaiman, Shaun Manning, Denis Medri, Corinna Bechko, Gabriel Hardman, Simon Roy, Duane Swierczynski, Shannon Wheeler, and Carla Speed McNeil
Art by Steve Lieber, Michael Avon Oeming, Todd Harris, Paul Chadwick, Andrew Drilon, Denis Medri, Gabriel Hardman, Simon Roy, Eric Nguyen, Shannon Wheeler, and Carla Speed McNeil

I really don't understand the thinking here.  This issue of Dark Horse Presents has a story written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Paul Chadwick, and yet the cover is given over to Caitlin Kiernan's middling Alabaster series, which has been running for a while, and is not all that interesting.  Sure Gaiman and Chadwick get their names on the cover, in rather small print, but I would think that picking any of Chadwick's beautiful splash pages, and putting Gaiman's name in larger print under the comic's title, would have grabbed a lot more new readers at the comics store.  Their story is quite wonderful - a bit of a prose poem about the different ways the world can end, with a last one that is most devastating, and most personal.

Other than that, this is again a pretty mixed-bag issue of DHP.  There's a new chapter of Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil, which is the main reason why I buy this book.  I was disappointed to see that the story ends with the words "The End", and I'm hoping that refers to this 'Third World' storyline, and not the end of McNeil's regular contributions to this book.

Simon Roy, the brilliant semi-regular artist of Image's Prophet, and Jan's Atomic Heart, debuts his new story, Tiger Lung, here.  We don't know a lot from this first chapter, except that the story involves a young man journeying deep into an ice cave or glacier, despite the protestations of his people.  I love Roy's work, and can't wait to see where this leads.

Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman's Station to Station ends this issue.  It's been a good story, with a real BPRD feel to it, but I think it didn't really get enough space to breathe in these few chapters.  I just like looking at Hardman's art though.

Denis Medri starts off his Arcade Boy story here, and it's a fun look at teenager-dom and video games, set in a near-future that has hoverboards!  It's kind of derivative, but enjoyable.  I've never read work by Shannon Wheeler before, and I enjoyed the first chapter of Villain House, which has a pair of supervillains breaking out of jail.

Beyond that, there's not much to say.  Journeyman continues, and grabs my attention a little more than the first chapter did.  X is finally over, and Michael Avon Oeming's The Victories continues to do absolutely nothing for me.

Dark Horse Presents #20

Written by Michael Avon Oeming, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Geoffrey Thorne, Ulises Farinas, Erick Freitas, Frank J. Barbiere, Corinna Bechko, Gabriel Hardman, Joshua Williamson, Peter Hogan, Duane Swierczynski, and Carla Speed McNeil
Art by Michael Avon Oeming, Steve Lieber, Todd Harris, Ulises Farinas, Toby Cypress, Gabriel Hardman, Pere Perez, Steve Parkhouse, Eric Nguyen, and Carla Speed McNeil

More and more, I feel like the lustre is coming off this title, as the serials are increasingly being produced in service of introducing upcoming mini-series, and the sense of getting a complete story out of this rather expensive monthly book is drastically diminished.  In addition, I'm not sure I'm happy about the increased presence of superhero-style stories.  That has never been a particular strength of Dark Horse, yet there seems to be a drive to compete in that area again.

This issue features a Victories story by Michael Avon Oeming.  The Victories is either currently running, or just finished running as a mini-series as well, so this story doesn't feel the need to introduce the characters.  When Oeming writes his own superhero stories, they tend to be pretty bleak (check out his Rapture title of a couple of years ago), and this is no different, with a scene where a father cuts off the head of a dog, and forces it over his own son's head.  This doesn't work for me.

I was enjoying the Captain Midnight story, which ends here without an ending, but instead an ad for an upcoming mini-series.  Both Joshua Williamson and Pere Perez have done nice work on this, but I don't know if it's going to be enough to get me to buy the book when it comes out.

I do know that I don't like X, Dark Horse's answer to the Punisher.  I didn't like the character in the 90s, and I'm not feeling him here under Duane Swierczynski and Eric Nguyen.

In the non-super hero category, the charm of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Alabaster continues to escape me, although I did like this chapter better than the previous ones.

Journeymen is a new series by Geoffrey Thorne and Todd Harris, and I don't really have an opinion of it.  I think it needed more space to grow, as it didn't leave much of an impression either way.

Gamma, the strange story about monsters and cowardice, by Ulises Farinas and Erick Freitas, ends on a very good note, as the story becomes one of redemption.  I feel that Farinas is a creator to watch.

Frank Barbiere's occasional series 'The White Suits' takes a very positive turn with this instalment, which is drawn by the fantastic Toby Cypress.  This time, we get a story about an FBI agent who has dedicated her life to finding her missing father, who she now believes is somehow involved with the White Suits - Russian mobsters of great mystery.  I like how Barbiere has been building the mythology of this group without really telling us anything about them, and I like how he's been working with a variety of artists.

Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman's 'Station to Station' feels like it could easily fit into the BPRD world, and it continues to work well.

Resident Alien is one of my favourite serials in this series, and while it annoys me that the last three chapters haven't even told a story, but just follow our good alien doctor through his recovery from his first mini-series, I do enjoy Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse's work on this story, and will definitely be there for the next mini-series.

Of course, the best part of this comic is Carla Speed McNeil's 'Finder', which finds Jaeger in a bad place, as he discovers that he's in a city where everyone is terminally ill, and that they are able to pass their ailments on to another person, namely him.  This is a new type of sin-eating for Jaeger to perform, and I can't wait to see what McNeil does with it.

I think I would continue to buy this book if Finder is the only story in it I want to read.  Luckily, next month we get Neil Gaiman and Paul Chadwick working together, which should be exciting.

Dark Horse Presents #18

Written by Joshua Williamson, Carla Speed McNeil, Ulises Farinas, Erick Freitas, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Corben, Dara Naraghi, Phil Stanford, Peter Hogan, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Colin Lorimer, and Mike Richardson
Art by Victor Ibáñez, Carla Speed McNeil, Ulises Farinas, Richard Corben, Victor Santos, Patric Reynolds, Steve Parkhouse, Steve Lieber, Colin Lorimer, and Ron Chan

This issue of Dark Horse Presents is much stronger than some of the recent issues, as some new serials begin, some of the better ones continue or return, and we are given an excellent one-off memoir.

The book opens with a story about Captain Midnight, by Joshua Williamson and Victor Ibáñez.  A WWII plane comes flying out of the Bermuda Triangle, piloted by the Captain, who ends up on the deck of a US aircraft carrier.  It's clear that he is lost in time.  What's not clear is if this is a new character or one that has shown up before (the title loudly proclaims that he 'returns').  All I know is that I enjoyed this story, but I'm not familiar with this character.

From there, we get a new chapter of Finder, my now-favourite science fiction comic.  Jaegar is in a city he hasn't been to before, where it appears that all the citizens suffer from something called Apex Sudden Death Syndrome.  Consequently, no one goes outside, and are instead represented by different types of holographic avatars.  This is pretty typical work from Carla Speed McNeil - it's dense with ideas and characterization, and there is a general assumption that we already know what she's talking about, even though these ideas are brand new.  I'm completely hooked on this serial.

After that comes 'Gamma', a new serial by Ulises Farias and Erick Freitas.  It's a bizarre little story that starts off being about a 'coward' who hangs out a bar all day, where people pay $50 to punch him in the face.  Later, he's asked to help a battered woman stand up to her husband, and suddenly this story is about people using holographic 'monsters' to fight each other.  Farias's art has a bit of a Brandon Graham meets Moebius vibe to it, so I'm on board.

Richard Corben gives us another adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe poem or short story, and as is always the case with these things, it's lovely and odd.

One of the best pieces this month is Dara Naraghi's memoir of growing up on the shore of the Caspian Sea in Iran.  It's lovingly illustrated by Victor Santos, and very nicely evokes a lost time and place.  I really wish we'd see more things like this in anthologies and comics in general.

Resident Alien, which is an excellent series, returns this month with a strangely-paced story.  It opens with a dream shared between the alien doctor's assistant and her grandfather (I think?), before we move back in time three years, and see the US military men who found the doctor's spacecraft, as they investigate his arrival on Earth.  I'm not sure where this is leading, but I'm happy to see more of this story.

Alabaster returns, and City of Roses continues, but neither really grab my attention.  I feel the same about The Secret Order of the Teddy Bears, which is an all-ages story that is lacking the complexity of some of the other all-ages pieces that have run in this book (I'm thinking of Beasts of Burden, which is brilliant).

UXB, another on-going serial, continues to mystify me in its lack of narrative cohesion.  I really do not understand what is going on in this series.

Still, this is a very successful issue overall.

Dark Horse Presents #17

Written by Carla Speed McNeil, Phil Stanford, David Chelsea, John Layman, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Edgar Allen Poe, Richard Corben, Michael Avon Oeming, Tony Puryear, Erika Alexander, Robert Alexander, Colin Lorimer, and Michael T. Gilbert
Art by Carla Speed McNeil, Patric Reynolds, David Chelsea, Sam Kieth, Tony Akins, Richard Corben, Victor Santos, Tony Puryear, Colin Lorimer, and Michael T. Gilbert

I don't know if it's just my mood when I read this anthology this month, but I came away from it feeling a little less than impressed.  There are still some great comics in this book, but somehow, it became much less than the sum of its parts this time around.  Let's review:

• I love 'Finder', Carla Speed McNeil's epic comics series.  The DHP stories are usually excellent, as they are beautiful.  This month's could have benefitted from the annotations that McNeil has filled her trades with; I kind of had no clue what was going on here, as Jaegar runs with some Laeske females, before being captured by some young people with horns, who appear to be poaching Laeske eggs.  I think.  Like I said, footnotes.
• For the second month in a row, Phil Stanford's 'City of Roses' feels like a lot of set-up with no pay-off.  Something solid needs to happen here soon.
• David Chelsea's 'The Girl With the Keyhole Eyes' finally finishes.  It's a cool idea - a free-form poem or stream-of-consciousness comic, but that kind of thing doesn't work in a serial format, and it got kind of repetitive.
• John Layman and Sam Kieth's Aliens story ends as most Aliens stories do; there's never a surprise there.  This story had some potential, but it never quite reached it.
• I think that 'Deep Sea', Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Tony Akins's ocean adventure series is very interesting, and one of the most effective pieces here, while still being a standard B-movie genre piece.
• Richard Corben adapts another Edgar Allan Poe poem, 'The Sleeper'.  It's creepy and atmospheric, and less gender-ambiguously creepy as last month's.  Good stuff.
• There is a story here by Michael Avon Oeming and Victor Santos, called 'The Sacrifice', which I guess is a one-off.  It's fine, if you're okay with stories about elves and magic swords in trees.  It's pretty.
• I've been loving Concrete Park, by Tony Puryear, and I'm excited to see that the two storylines have finally collided (more or less literally), in this, the last chapter of the first 'book'.  Puryear told me that there is going to be more of this story coming soon, and I look forward to that.
• I vaguely remember the first chapter of Colin Lorimer's UXB from six months back or so, and I remember that I liked it, but I found this new chapter very ambiguous (at the end), and totally lacking in context.  
• I'm not very enthusiastic about Michael T. Gilbert's Mr. Monster.  Actually, I never bothered to finish this story.

Here's hoping that next month's DHP is a little more impressive.

Dark Horse Presents #16

Written by Phil Stanford, John Layman, David Chelsea, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Carla Speed McNeil, Erika Alexander, Tony Puryear, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Corben, Nate Cosby, Bo Hampton, Robert Tinnell, and Chad Lambert
Art by Patric Reynolds, Sam Kieth, David Chelsea, Tony Akins, Carla Speed McNeil, Tony Puryear, Richard Corben, Evan Shaner, Bo Hampton, and Apri Kusbiantoro

Another month, another collection of short comics of varying topic and quality.  Let's see what was impressive...

Of course, I continue to love Carla Speed McNeil's Finder the best.  This episode has Jaeger wandering the desert looking for water, which is the way to complete the ritual he began last month.  I love the complexity of McNeil's world, although I do really miss the explanatory notes that she has filled her collections with - not because I need them to understand the story, but because they help me appreciate how truly layered and well-realized her fiction is.  The colours this month, done by Jenn Manly Lee and Bill Mudron, look very different from what we've seen before.

Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, probably the two most prolific writers and idea creators in comics, start Deep Sea this month.  Usually these two work for DC or Image, and it's interesting to see them providing a story for DHP when they could just as easily include it in their own anthology Creator-Owned Heroes (unless, of course, there is no one heroic in their comic).  This is an ocean bottom exploration/love story/potential time travel story, and it looks pretty interesting.  Art by Tony Akins never hurts.

Concrete Park has another good chapter, as the two strands of the story get closer to colliding.  Tony Puryear and his crew have really caught my attention with this series, and I look forward to seeing where this is going.

Richard Corben adapts Edgar Allan Poe's 'Berenice', a strange story about an obsessive young man who marries a woman with alluring teeth.  For some reason Corben adds a gender-bending element to the story that is probably not in the original, and it makes the story extra disturbing and bizarre.

Chad Lambert returns with another comic memoir about his days in the radio industry.  I particularly appreciated the love Lambert shows for my all-time favourite sitcom 'WKRP in Cincinnati', both literally and figuratively.  What is it about Cincinnati and autobiographical comics anyway?

John Layman and Sam Kieth's strange Aliens story takes a turn for the worse again, mostly due to Kieth's rushed-looking art.  Bo Hampton's Riven continues to feel like a big part of the story is missing, and Nate Cosby and Evan Shaner's Buddy Cops continues to be amusing, but not my cup of tea.  David Chelsea's 'The Girl With the Keyhole Eyes' is a cool idea that is being done to death; I think if this free-form thought poem of a comic were shorter, it would be much less exasperating.

The new serial, 'Crime Does Not Pay', by Phil Stanford and Patric Reynolds was pretty underwhelming.  The trick with crime comics is to not make them be something everyone has read multiple times before.  This is not that.

Dark Horse Presents #15

Written by Michael Avon Oeming, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Carla Speed McNeil, David Chelsea, Erika Alexander, Tony Puryear, John Layman, Bo Hampton, Robert Tinnell, Arvid Nelson, Nate Cosby, Mike Baron, and Kim W. Anderson
Art by Michael Avon Oeming, Phil Noto, Carla Speed McNeil, David Chelsea, Tony Puryear, Sam Kieth, Bo Hampton, Juan Ferreya, Evan Shaner, Steve Rude, and Kim W. Anderson

At this point, I'm pretty sure I would buy Dark Horse Presents every month just for Carla Speed McNeil's Finder.  Were the rest of the book full of stories by Howard Chaykin, Neal Adams (writing his own work), Jeph Loeb, Rob Liefeld, Mark Bagley, and Chuck Austen, I would probably still buy it, and only read McNeil's story.  That's how good Finder is.

In this newest chapter, Jaeger, stuck in the middle of the conflict over an Ascian burial ground, takes on his role as Sin-Eater, in an act that is equally horrifying and noble.  McNeil has often referred to her brilliant science fiction comic as 'aboriginal sci-fi', and that is clearly what is happening here.  It's very good, very powerful stuff.

This issue of DHP also brings back the series Rex Mundi, in a surprise story featuring Brother Moricant.  I'm not sure what all new readers would get from this comic, but it is nice to see Arvid Nelson and Juan Ferreya working together again, and I've always loved the masks that the brothers of the Inquisition wear.

John Layman and Sam Kieth's Aliens story snaps into focus this month, as we finally get a more solid understanding of the female main character.  Layman is not writing a traditional Aliens story at all here, and it's a bit of a shame that it's taken so long for that to become clear.  Were this a mini-series, that could be read in larger chunks, it would have probably worked better.

Michael Avon Oeming's Wild Rover, which gets the cover this month, also becomes clearer and more interesting, as a dark horror story.  Bo Hampton and Robert Tinnell's Riven jumps up a number of years this issue, and continues to build the groundwork for a successful horror tale.

I'm continuing to get a lot of enjoyment out of Tony Puryear's Concrete Park, which jumps all over the place, but is always an engaging read.

Kim W. Anderson gives us another story of twisted love, which works like an old school EC horror story, updated for the Internet age.  David Chelsea gives us an improvisational story with 'The Girl With the Keyhole Eyes', and the newest chapter of Ghost continues to be decent.

I'm glad that there's so much to enjoy in this series beyond the Finder chapter, which makes this a must-buy.

Dark Horse Presents #14

Written by John Layman, Carla Speed McNeil, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Dean Motter, Mark Verheiden, Bryan Oh, Tony Puryear, Mike Baron, Bo Hampton, Robert Tinnell, Chad Lambert, Michael Avon Oeming, Nate Cosby, George Schall, Rodrigo Alonso, and Kim W. Anderson
Art by Sam Kieth, Carla Speed McNeil, Phil Noto, Dean Motter, Mark Nelson, Tony Puryear, Steve Rude, Bo Hampton, Apri Kusbiantoro, Michael Avon Oeming, Evan Shaner, George Schall, and Kim W. Anderson

This month, Dark Horse Presents is 104 pages long.  Take in the fact that that is equivalent to more than five comics from Marvel or DC, which could run you between 14.95 and 19.95, yet this book only costs $7.99.  Clearly, the fine people at Dark Horse know how to give you value for your money.  Even if you don't love every story in here, you only need to love half of them or less to feel that you got your money's worth, right?

For me, as always, the Finder story is worth the price of admission.  This month's instalment is great.  Jaegar is still hanging out in Third World, the contested and unorganized region far outside the domed cities or tribal lands where he usually spends his time.  He comes across a cemetery in a field that is at the centre of a large, and loud, dispute between various factions.  It seems that a hotel corporation wants to build on the field, and were paying to relocate the bodies buried there.  That's all good, but a large number of previously unknown bodies have been found, and they are clearly Ascian.  Ascians, like Jaegar, are an indigenous people in McNeil's world, and the story can be read as a comment on problems that exist in North America today around sacred Aboriginal ground and the balancing act needed between tradition, cultural sensitivity, and the needs of commerce and current lifestyles.  But, this being Finder, it's not long before Jaegar finds himself stuck in the middle, and being perhaps, the only person who can resolve this issue, whether he wants to or not.  Great stuff, although I was hoping we'd see a little more of Professor Shar.

Also of note this month is the return of Tony Puryear's excellent Concrete Park strip.  It's been a little while, so I was a little lost as to what's going on, but I'm really enjoying Puryear's gangsta sci-fi.

Dean Motter's Mister X wrapped up in this issue.  This was a good enough story, but not among Motter's greatest.  Kelly Sue DeConnick and Phil Noto's Ghost works well, and John Layman and Sam Kieth's Aliens is much improved.

Nexus, by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, still doesn't appeal to me, but I did make it through this whole story about invasive alien bugs and a creepy space ship that has been in orbit around Ylam for fourteen years.

There are a number of new strips that debut this month.  Some are one-offs, and others are set to continue.  Some, I'm not sure if this is it or not.  Mark Verheiden (been a long time since I've seen his name), Bryan Oh, and Mark Nelson have a good story about humans fighting an alien invasion in Falling Skies.  It's a little familiar, but it's well told. 

Bo Hampton and Robert Tinnell begin Riven, a creepy monster story involving a strange little girl adopted out of a Romanian orphanage right after Ceaucescu's regime fell.  This story is full of suspense, and hinges on many successful little details.  I was pretty impressed by it, and look forward to seeing where it goes.

Radio Ga Ga is a memoir by Chad Lambert and drawn by Apri Kubiantoro (whose work reminds me of Francesco Francavilla, only rougher).  Lambert tells a story about his radio days, when a joke he made on the air was reported to the Secret Service as a threat to President Clinton's life.  Lambert writes this like a Harvey Pekar story, a fact driven home as he narrates it in a comic store, in front of an issue of American Splendor.  I love this story simply for the fact that it references WKRP...

Michael Avon Oeming's Wild Rover is a dark little tale about a man who is convinced that his vices are being caused by an evil entity in his stomach.  This is a very piercing story that shows a side of Oeming that I haven't seen in his work before.

Buddy Cops, by Nate Cosby and Evan Shaner, is a fun little strip about a Green Lantern-like galactic protector who has been demoted to serving on the NYPD, and his super-serious android partner.  It's cute.

A Spy Dream, by George Schall with writing assist by Rodrigo Alonso is a very cool little story about a female spy who dreams about settling down with her lover, who is on the other side, or is conversely about a bored housewife who dreams about being a spy.  It's beautifully drawn.

Finally (I'm not going to mention the short humour strips, as they don't appeal to me at all), there's Love Hurts, Kim W. Anderson's strip about a woman who meets the perfect guy in the park.  There's a sinister side to his knowledge of all her favourite things though.  It doesn't help that the guy looks just like Steve Buscemi.

In all, a very satisfying heap of comics for a good price.

Dark Horse Presents #13

Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, John Arcudi, Carla Speed McNeil, Steve Niles, John Layman, Tim Seeley, Francesco Francavilla, Andrew Vachss, Mike Baron, and Dean Motter
Art by Phil Noto, Jonathan Case, Carla Speed McNeil, Christopher Mitten, Sam Kieth, Victor Drujiniu, Francesco Francavilla, Geof Darrow, Steve Rude, and Dean Motter

Sometimes I worry that this anthology is not always the best place for some of the comics that Dark Horse is presenting in it.  Lately, they've begun stories in DHP, and then spun them off into their own mini-series (such as Resident Alien) or on-goings (like The Massive).  In the latter's case, the stories were clearly serving an introductory role, and that was fine, but in the case of Resident Alien, the story was simply begun here, and then continued elsewhere, which makes it a tough story to follow for readers of this book, or for people who picked up the first issue, and would have had no clue what was going on (the DHP stories were printed again in a '0' issue).

I bring this up, because the 'concluding' chapter to Steve Niles and Christopher Mittens's Criminal Macabre story this month just stops; it doesn't really end.  At least the Occultist, which also concludes this month, more or less finished its story, while still setting things up to be returned to later down the road.

On the positive side, and worth the purchase of the book, is the new Finder story by Carla Speed McNeil.  She is continuing to examine the lives of Ascians in the region called Third World, as Jaeger and his new friend help an artist trying to sell her paintings.  At the contemporary museum, her work is too 'archaeological' and indigenous, but at the archaeology museum, her work is too contemporary, a trap which many indigenous and minority painters find themselves in.  There is a surprise return of an older character at the end of the story, which made me happy, but which would be utterly puzzling to a new reader.  I wish that McNeil was providing footnotes to these stories.

Also of interest this month is the continuation of Dean Motter's Mister X story, and John Arcudi and Jonathan Case's The Creep, which is excellent.  The Aliens story, by John Layman and Sam Kieth is a little better than its debut chapter, and Francesco Francavilla's Black Beetle is pretty, if also pretty standard.

The return of The Ghost, by Kelly Sue DeConnick didn't excite me too much, but it's an interesting story created by two very gifted comics creators; I'm going to see where it leads before I pass judgement. 

Andrew Vachss's prose story of child predators on the internet and the motley collection of freaks who hunt them down for profit was disturbing and weird, but not in a good way.  Nexus is boring.

Dark Horse Presents #12

Written by John Layman, John Arcudi, Carla Speed McNeil, Steve Niles, Evan Dorkin, Tim Seeley, Francesco Francavilla, Dean Motter, Mike Baron, Harlan Ellison, and Mike Russell
Art by Sam Kieth, Jonathan Case, Carla Speed McNeil, Christopher Mitten, Evan Dorkin, Victor Drujiniu, Francisco Francavilla, Dean Motter, Steve Rude, Richard Corben, Mike Russell, and Geof Darrow

A few new serials begin with this issue of Dark Horse Presents, which is always a good thing, as it shows that this title is constantly evolving and trying new things, or as is more the case with this issue, returning to its roots.

One of the new series is Mister X, Dean Motter's classic examination of the effect of architecture on weak minds, set in a Deco-styled environment.  I've been a fan of this series for a long time, so it's very nice to see it come back, even if this first installment is mostly just set-up for a new story involving the kidnapping of an heir to a pyschotropic pharmaceutical empire.

We also see the return of Aliens to DHP.  This property is one of the ones that Dark Horse made its name by publishing back in the day, but this first chapter didn't do much for me.  John Layman's writing was fine (if miles away from the tone he uses on Chew), but Sam Kieth couldn't make up his mind between drawing beautiful and detailed images (the first three pages) or aping Kyle Baker at his worst (the rest of it).

Also showing up for the first time in many years is Mike Baron and Steve Rude's Nexus, which I've never read before now.  I wasn't too impressed, really.  This reads like an Adam Strange story, and while Rude's art is always lovely, I wouldn't pursue this story into its own title.

There is also a prose story by Harlan Ellison, with a couple of illustrations by Richard Corben.  I've always admired Ellison more in terms of reputation than his actual writing, and this story did not hold my interests.  Likewise, I had to give up on Evan Dorkin's story about zombie cosplayers, which was way too wordy for me.

The new chapter of Finder, however, was brilliant once again.  Carla Speed McNeil has Jaeger examining the region called Third World, and this leads to some interesting conversations about class distinction, 'First World' ego, and the place of nomadic tribes like the Ascians in the world.  I miss her detailed footnotes, but am extremely happy whenever another chapter of Finder shows up.

I also enjoyed the new chapters of Francavilla's Black Beetle and Seeley and Drujiniu's The Occultist.  Arcudi and Case's The Creep was also very good.  The Criminal Macabre story held my interests more than it usually does too.

In all, another successful issue for this meaty anthology comic.

Dark Horse Presents #11

Written by Francesco Francavilla, Steve Horton, Carla Speed McNeil, Steve Niles, Evan Dorkin, Tim Seeley, John Arcudi, Andrew Vachss, Neal Adams, and Frank J. Barbiere
Art by Francesco Francavilla, Michael Dialynas, Carla Speed McNeil, Christopher Mitten, Evan Dorkin, Victor Drujiniu, Jonathan Case, Geof Darrow, Neal Adams, and Luke Radl

Once again, Dark Horse Presents delivers a variety of comics for your reading pleasure.  As always, it's a pretty mixed bag, with the good being discussed first:

• Francesco Francavilla is an artist I've enjoyed for quite some time, and it's nice to see him finally doing some creator-owned work.  The Black Beetle is a pretty standard pulp hero, with a Spirit/Shadow/Lobster Johnson type character trying to protect a beautiful archeologist (or curator, or something like that) from a group of personal helicopter-wearing Nazis who want to steal a priceless artifact.  It's predictable, but pretty.
• I'm always happy to get a new chapter of Finder, Carla Speed McNeil's long-running series.  She's making good use of the colour possibilities of this anthology, as she has Jaegar walk through a number of strange environments.  It's a short piece, but it's very nice.
• I don't remember John Arcudi's old series The Creep, but this reintroduction to the character works quite well, as the title character receives a letter from an old girlfriend telling him that her son committed suicide, and that she thinks there's something more to it.  This is how you begin a new story told in short chapters; I'm looking forward to reading more.  I like Jonathan Case's art here.
• Andrew Vachss's prose piece 'Pig' goes down quite easily, if it feels like it's from another era.  It's a story about a young gang-banger and the friendship he develops with an overweight kid who is not part of his clique.  Geof Darrows's illustrations are less Darrow-ish than anything I've ever seen him do, but they work with this story.
• I don't know what the deal is with 'The Way Out', a story 'From the Pages of the White Suits', which is set in Moscow in the late 80s.  It's about a young female courier who gets caught up in some madness involving gangsters and soldiers.  I don't know if this is the beginning of a new series, or is a stand-alone story, but it has my interest.  Luke Radl's art is very nice in Frank J. Barbiere's story.

Beyond that, I found I didn't have much use for the rest of the book.  Steve Niles and Christopher Mittens's Cal MacDonald story still hasn't caught my eye, and I am still having trouble getting into the Steve Horton and Michael Dialynas 'Amala's Blade' series.  Tim Seeley's new series The Occultist was too like the Cal MacDonald and a hundred other comics to impress me.

I hate Neal Adams's Blood comic, and feel much the same about anything Evan Dorkin does that doesn't involve Jill Thompson and the Beasts of Burden.  Next month:  Aliens!

Dark Horse Presents #10

Written by Brian Wood, Colin Lorimer, Carla Speed McNeil, Steve Niles, Evan Dorkin, Alan Gordon, Steve Horton, Andrew Vachss, MJ Butler, and Rich Johnston
Art by Kristian Donaldson, Colin Lorimer, Carla Speed McNeil, Christopher Mitten, Evan Dorkin, Thomas Yeates, Michael Dialynas, Geof Darrow, Mark Wheatley, and Simon Rohrmüller

Anthologies can be hit or miss, and where the last few issues of Dark Horse Presents have been terrific, this one came off feeling rather lacking.

As always, to begin with the positive:

Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson's The Massive has definitely caught my attention.  So far, each chapter has been used to introduce a new character, and to establish that all of them have almost died at sea, only to be saved, or brought back by it.  I really have no idea where this comic is headed, but the three-page overview of various key moments in the history of oceanic environmental degradation is enough to get me to add the upcoming series to my pull-file.  I trust Wood to impress me.

There is a new series debuting in this issue called UXB, by Colin Lorimer, an artist I'm unfamiliar with.  It's yet another post-apocalyptic story, where people roam the ruins of our civilization wearing environmental protective apparati that look a little like high-tech codpieces.  Again, not much is revealed here, except that our trio of heroes are on the search for old DVDs, and the consequences of giving them nothing but Pretty Woman and the Backstreet Boys aren't pretty.  I really don't know where this is going either, but Lorimer has my attention.

Carla Speed McNeil's Finder returns after a pause of a few months.  Now, Finder was my great discovery of 2011, and I can't praise it enough (you really should click on the link and give yourself a treat), so I'm always excited to dive into a new story.  This one could probably have used McNeil's usual annotations though, as I'm more than a little lost.  Jaeger finds himself well and truly lost after the events of the last chapter (whenever that was), but, because he is a Finder, and kind of lucky, he quickly runs in to an old acquaintance.  I just wish that a little more happened in this story, and that I knew what the deal is with the flying Chinese dragon-train thing at the end.  Still, I love McNeil's work.

Rich Johnston's 'The Many Murders of Miss Cranbourne' finishes up this issue, and continues to be quite decent.

From here, we move into stories that I didn't necessarily dislike, but that I wouldn't pursue were they to get their own title:

The Tarzan story by Alan Gordon and Thomas Yeates is an odd throwback, and I found my attention wavering while reading this chapter.  I don't know that I can handle a post-Apocalyptic immortal Tarzan, especially just after reading another post-Apocalyptic strip a few pages previous.

The 'Amala's Blade' and 'Skultar' stories are fine.  They just aren't my thing.  I feel the same way about the Cal MacDonald story by Niles and Mitten.  I've just never warmed to Niles's writing, no matter what he does. 

There's a prose story by Andrew Vachss in this issue, which has lovely illustrations from the ever-talented Geof Darrow.  Now, I always associate Vachss's name with brutal stories about children being murdered or abused, because I read some pretty dark stuff from him years ago, and basically avoided his work forever after.  This story is dark, but not as brutal, as it is concerned with an aging man who is not able to accept his growing diminishment. It's rough, but there it is.

Finally, this issue features two stories by Evan Dorkin.  One is a short Milk and Cheese piece, while the other features a Munsters/Addams Family parody called The Murder Family.  I didn't finish either story.  I don't see how Dorkin, who has written such haunting and nuanced work in Beasts of Burden, also churns out such predictable, juvenile, and un-funny junk.  I know that Milk and Cheese have their fans, I just don't understand why.

The Finder Library Vol. 2

by Carla Speed McNeil

Finder has been my favourite comic book discovery of 2011.  Carla Speed McNeil's series has been around for years, but was completely under my radar until Dark Horse began collecting the series in the Finder Library series, serializing new adventures of main character Jaeger in their new Dark Horse Presents monthly anthology comic, and published the new graphic novel Voice.

Finder has been described as 'aboriginal science fiction', and I suppose that description works as well as any other.  The series is mostly set in the great domed city of Anvard, where millions of people live in the cramped, multi-layered, complicated society run by clans and strict social stratification that can even dictate how much artificial sunlight is pumped into a neighbourhood.  The world of Anvard is deliciously complex, and McNeil revels in constructing stories that help to expose new facets of the society, while also provide an emotional wallop.

This second volume of the Finder Library collects sixteen issues of the comic, plus whatever additional material McNeil chose to toss in (this volume does not feel as formally structured as the first).  It contains four stories: 'Dream Sequence', 'Mystery Date', 'The Rescuers', and 'Five Crazy Women', each very different in tone and content.

'Dream Sequence' is about Magri White, a prodigy who has constructed and maintains a complete virtual reality in his own mind.  Thousands of people jack into his reality, called Elsewhere, and enjoy walking around in his memories in the thousands of structures he has created.  Since childhood, Magri had been under the care of a corporation that has made billions off of Elsewhere.  The problem is that now a monster is loose in that world, and visitors are getting injured in reality.  This story is very surrealistic, and completely brilliant.  I found myself getting very wrapped up in Magri's environment, and McNeil does an amazing job of showing his frustration and decent into near-madness.

'Mystery Date' is a stark contrast to this story.  It stars Vary, a young girl who grew up as a form of ritualized temple prostitute in her home village, and who has come to Anvar for an education.  She ends up getting involved in a strange triangle with an emotionally distant professor who wears complex prosthetic legs, and his colleague, a Laeske.  Laeske are bird-lizard creatures about the size of horses, who are often as intelligent as a person.  This is a bizarre story, a romantic comedy in a completely bizarre setting, and it works very well.

'The Rescuers' is the first story in this book to feature Jaeger in a prominent role.  He is living with a group of Ascians, his adopted people, in a large dome within the dome of Anvard, that is owned by the Baron Manavelin.  The Ascians have been allowed to camp on the Baron's property, and work as servants in his estate.  One night, during an elaborate party, the Baron's infant child is kidnapped.  What follows is a form of noir detective story, as Jaeger begins to assist the rather useless local police (despite the Baron's wealth, his home is in a relatively backwards part of Anvard, and so only sub-clan police are employed there).  This was a particularly effective look into McNeil's world, and it wore the influence of the Lindbergh kidnapping on its sleeve.

The final story, 'Five Crazy Women' focuses on Jaeger and the relationships he has with the women of Anvard.  Being a drifter, and moving in and out of the city, Jaeger has few possessions and no home.  Whenever he turns up in the city for a while, he usually calls up one of his many women.  He has some difficulty finding anyone when this story opens, and so he has to find some new 'friends' to take him in, finding only some real nutcases.  This is a fun story, and it reveals more about Jaeger and his way of living.

Taken as a whole, Finder is incredible.  McNeil provides detailed notes in the back (forty pages of notes for 600 pages of comics), which is something I'm always a sucker for.  The depth in her work is pretty much unmatched in comics today - the only comparison I can think of is Neil Gaiman's Sandman for complexity and magnetic appeal.  I suppose an easier comparison would be to Frank Herbert's Dune, or perhaps Lord of the Rings, if it wasn't so boring.  I really loved immersing myself in McNeil's world, and am thankful that she is continuing to publish Jaeger's stories in DHP; I just hope that another long-form story like Voice will be coming our way soon.

As a sidebar to this, I would love to see McNeil write (and draw) Wolverine at Marvel.  Jaeger and Logan are very similar, living according to complicated codes and usually being the most noble savages in the room.  It would be a very interesting take on the character, and I think she would excel at it.

Dark Horse Presents #7

Written by Mike Mignola, Andi Watson, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, MJ Butler, Stan Sakai, Tony Puryear, Brandon Graham, Felipe Melo, and Carla Speed McNeil
Art by Mike Mignola, Andi Watson, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Mark Wheatley, Stan Sakai, Tony Puryear, Brandon Graham, Juan Cavia, and Carla Speed McNeil

There are some new members to the the exclusive Dark Horse Presents library this month.

I don't know who Tony Puryear is, but the first chapter of his Concrete Park definitely has my attention.  It's set in a place called Scare City, a place beset by gangs, pimps, and protests, in what I assume is a not-too distant future.  These eight pages are spent introducing a few characters, and setting the scene, and I can't wait to read more.  This has a real DMZ meets Love and Rockets feel going for it.

There is also a Brandon Graham story, which is a huge treat.  He is moving into some more abstract territory than King City, with this tale about a man's voice who left him, returning over after the man's death.  He has to deal with the various Secrets, Ideas, and Doubts that are inhabiting the man's labyrinthine home.  Graham is working on some other level, with some of his usual puns being given centre stage, in a story that deserves to be read a few times over.

MJ Butler and Mark Wheatley give us the beginning of Skultar, a very self-aware barbarian fantasy parody that is decent, if not all that special.  There is also a Usagi Yojimbo story.  I can't ever really get into these.

Mike Mignola has a Hellboy story, recounting one of the more mysterious cases during HB's time in Mexico.  This is a very standard Hellboy story - there are monsters, bodies rising from the grave, and Hellboy falls down.  Mignola needs to shake this stuff up a little bit; it's getting a little old.

Among the established stories, the Finder chapter is the best, as Jaegar meets a person with abilities that both represent the pinnacle of his profession, and which nullify the need for someone like him.  McNeil's art is really evolving into something wonderful lately; it's much richer than before (and I like her early stuff a great deal).

Howard Chaykin's Marked Man is almost over, and that's a good thing.  I hope Neal Adams's Blood is going to be finished soon; it's unreadable.  The Andi Watson story is decent, in a Borges-for-children way, and The Adventures of Dog Mendonca and Pizzaboy is pretty sub-par.

The Finder Library Volume 1

by Carla Speed McNeil

I don't understand how it is that until this last year, I'd not been aware of Finder.  The series has been around since 1997, and while self-published, and therefore maybe a little hard to find in all comics shops, it has garnered a great deal of praise.  Perhaps I had heard of it, but I'm sure I'd never seen it before Dark Horse released the original graphic novel Voice, which I read a while back, and then reprinted the entire series to date in the two volumes of The Finder Library.

I think I've come across my new favourite comic.  This first volume contains twenty-two issues of the comic, and weighs in at 590 pages of comics, with a solid forty more pages of notes.  And trust me, you'll need the notes - this is one complex piece of work.

Finder is about the denizens of Anvard, a very old domed city.  It's so old that no one remembers who built the dome, or how it works.  Now millions of people live crammed into its space, on multiple levels (some never seeing any light) and on three shifts, so that their world can function more efficiently.  Anvardian society is divided into clans of people who share similar traits (the Llaveracs, the most prominent in this comic, all appear female, regardless of their actual gender) or similar career functions (the Medawars, of secondary importance in this comic, run the police, the army, and the medical professions).  Non-members of clans, or people of mixed parentage, inhabit lowlier levels of society.  Among the lowest are the Ascians, a nomadic group that live outside the domes, and are basically analogues to Native Americans.  The lowliest of the Ascians are the Sin-Eaters, people who take on the regrets and mistakes of others.  There is also a secretive order of Finders, who may be seen as scouts, and who are highly regarded.

The central character of this book is Jaeger, both Finder and Sin-Eater, a half-breed with no real home and an endless sense of wanderlust.  Jaeger has always been close to the Grosvenor family, who share the spotlight with him.  Emma Grosvenor is a Llaverac beauty, while her ex-husband Brigham, is a Medawar.  Emma and their children, Rachel, Lynne (a boy), and Marcie were all badly abused by Brigham, who had kept them confined for years as a method of controlling them, before they finally escaped.  Now, Brigham is out of jail and wants to find his family, and Jaeger, who feels he owes a debt to both sides, is trying to keep everyone safe.  That makes up the first half of this book, in the story called Sin-Eater.

It is followed by King of the Cats, a much lighter and funnier story, that involves Jaeger attempting to aid in the peace negotiations between a number of bands of his people and the Nyima, a lion-like people who are their traditional enemies.  Most of this action takes place in another domed city, Munkyland, a Disneyworld gone horribly wrong.  This story is very amusing, while it also shines a different light on Jaeger.

The final story, Talisman, is incredible.  It focuses on Marcie, the youngest Grosvenor child, her love of books and writing, and the irreparable sense of loss caused by her mother having thrown out her only book when she was young.  I think any reader would be able to relate to this beautiful story about the hazards of the creative process.

Carla Speed McNeil is a much more incredible cartoonist than I'd have given her credit for being based simply on the Finder stories being published in Dark Horse Presents.  This book is endlessly layered and textured with hundreds of madcap ideas and distractions, yet she is able to transport some very nuanced stories about human nature into her fantastical world without missing a step.  The notes in the back of the book are essential, but not because she isn't able to tell her story with the comics alone.  The notes act as a window into this fully realized world she has created, and allow her to make things as rich as she possibly can.

Reading a book this thick can become a chore at times, but instead, I found myself willfully slowing down my reading, so as to savour every panel.  I'm thankful that I have the second volume already waiting for me on a shelf, and while I'm excited to read it, I am going to give it some time, as when that is done, all that will be left to read of this series are the wonderful (but now woefully inadequate) eight pages a month in Dark Horse Presents.

Dark Horse Presents #6

Written by Peter Hogan, Carla Speed McNeil, Felipe Melo, Evan Dorkin, Fábio Moon, Neal Adams, Steve Niles, Robert Love, David Walker, Howard Chaykin, and Andi Watson
Art by Steve Parkhouse, Carla Speed McNeil, Juan Cavia, Jill Thompson, Fábio Moon, Neal Adams, Christopher Mitten, Robert Love, Howard Chaykin, Andi Watson, and Geof Darrow

Another month, another incredibly varied collections of stories in Dark Horse Presents.  This issue is a treat though, as it has a story by Fábio Moon, who is one of my favourite artists working today.  His story is about people challenging themselves, and it has the poetic quality familiar in his and his brother's work, especially to anyone who has read the brilliant Daytripper.  This piece was a nice surprise.

Also, there's a new Beasts of Burden story by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, which is also always welcome.  I did have a problem with this story though - it's flashback nature (the Wise Dog is telling a story to some puppies as the framing device) led Thompson to use sepia tones instead of her usual warm watercolours.  Still, this is a lovely little story.

I'm currently reading the first of the two Dark Horse Finder Library editions, and so the new Finder story by Carla Speed McNeil was of particular interest to me.  I like how accessible she's been making these shorts, and they definitely played a part in my seeking out the rest of her work.

I also continue to enjoy some of the on-going serials in this volume.  Number 13 is great, as is Resident Alien.  The Adventures of Dog Mendonca and Pizzaboy continues to grow on me, as does Howard Chaykin's Marked Man.

I found Andi Watson's ghost story to be cute if not really to my tastes, and I continue to not be very impressed with Criminal Macabre (which is at least over).  I find Neal Adams's Blood unreadable.

Dark Horse Presents #5

Written by Eric Powell, Chuck Brown, Felipe Melo, Robert Love, David Walker, Peter Hogan, Steve Niles, Howard Chaykin, Andi Watson, Carla Speed McNeil, and Neil Adams
Art by Eric Powell, Sanford Greene, Juan Cavia, Robert Love, Steve Parkhouse, Christopher Mitten, Howard Chaykin, Andi Watson, Carla Speed McNeil, and Neil Adams

Let's number-crunch for a moment.  This book has 80 pages of comics, divided into ten stories, for $7.99.  In contrast, this week's issue of Avengers had 20 pages of story, of which 30% were single- or double-splash pages, for $3.99.  The value, even when subtracting stories that I don't like, is plain to see.

This issue begins with a great little one-shot story by Eric Powell about a robot who is designed to explore a distant planet which could be the best hope for humanity's survival.  The robot is made a little too human though, and so while traveling for hundreds of years, he begins to indulge in the gifts mankind gave him - weapons, religion, and porn.  My hope is that Dark Horse will continue to pepper this series with more of these one-off gems.  There is another in here, by Andi Watson, but I didn't like it very much.  I have no problem with young adult comics; they just don't fit very well in a series like this, the rest of which is pretty mature.

I loved the new chapter of Finder, which is no great surprise really.  In it, Jaeger starts delivering items from his courier company's dead letter office, a concept that reminds me of reading Clive Barker in high school and getting swept up in the idea of being able to read undeliverable mail.

I also enjoyed the latest chapters of Number 13, Resident Alien, and even Howard Chaykin's story, which has grown on me.  The werewolf private eye story is interesting too, if a little strange in its mixture of humour with pretty depressing story matter.

I still don't care for Rotten Apple, which I think is over now, and the Criminal Macabre story still does nothing for me.  Neal Adams's Blood remains one of the worst comics I've ever read.  Is anyone enjoying it?

The CBLDF Presents Liberty Annual 2011

Written by Matt Wagner, JH Williams III, AJ Lieberman, Brandon Montclare, Steve Niles, Carla Speed McNeil, Kazim Ali, J. Michael Straczynski, Dara Haraghi, Judd Winick, Richard Starkings, Mark Waid, and Dave Grilli
Art by Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Matt Wagner, JH Williams III, Riley Rossmo, Joelle Jones, Michael Montenat, Carla Speed McNeil, Craig Thompson, Kevin Sacco, Christopher Mitten, Thiago Micalopulous, Rodney Ramos, Shaky Kane, Boo Cook, Jeff Lemire, and J. Gonzo

I've never bought an issue of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's Liberty Annual before, but seeing a number of creators I admire attached to it, I figured it was time to give it a try.  As with any anthology like this, the stories within are a pretty mixed bag, but I definitely admire the goals of the organization, which provides legal assistance to people in the comic book world who face censorship or legal difficulties related to comics.  The CBLDF is a champion of free speech, and as such, the stories and strips in this book are concerned with promoting that freedom.

There is a large emphasis in this issue on the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people.  Many stories focus on that, but none more effectively than Kazim Ali's memoir strip, which is beautifully drawn by Craig Thompson.  Compared to it, Matt Wagner's story, which features Hunter Rose, feels amateurish and ham-fisted.

Also of note in this book is JMS's rant about the separation of church and state, which raises some good points, and Mark Waid and Jeff Lemire's defense of superhero worship in children.  Carla Speed McNeil has a strip about her child, who has Down's Syndrome, and the ridiculousness of trying to maintain a vocabulary that doesn't cause offense.  Dara Haraghi and Christopher Mitten contribute an interesting story about growing up in Revolutionary Iran, which would be a nice companion to a story in the last issue of Dark Horse Presents.

Another item that is worthy of discussion in this book is the nude Elephantmen, just because that's not something you see everyday.

This is a very decent anthology, and really, anyone who loves comics should be willing to plunk down the $5 to help support the cause.