Dark Horse Presents #22

Written by Howard Chaykin, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Michael Avon Oeming, Geoffrey Thorne, Denis Medri, Mike Richardson, Patrick Alexander, Simon Roy, Jason Wordie, Kel McDonald, Shannon Wheeler, and Steve Moncuse
Art by Howard Chaykin, Steve Lieber, Michael Avon Oeming, Todd Harris, Denis Medri, Geof Darrow, Patrick Alexander, Simon Roy, Kel McDonald, Shannon Wheeler, and Steve Moncuse

It's not easy to give up on an anthology title, especially one that serializes stories over many months, but I think I just might be done with Dark Horse Presents.  Increasingly, I haven't found the stories on offer as interesting as they were when this series was relaunched about two years ago, and Dark Horse has made it pretty clear that most of these stories are going to be reprinted in 'zero' issues or as one-shots, which makes me wonder why I'm paying $8 a month for a fair amount of content that I'm not all that interested in reading.  Were Carla Speed McNeil's Finder series still running, I wouldn't even be thinking about jumping ship, as I consider paying $8 for 8 pages of her work completely reasonable, on the off chance that something else in the package would strike my fancy.

This issue, the story I enjoyed the most was the continuation of Simon Roy's Tiger Lung, which is an indigenous spiritual adventure.  I have been a fan of Roy's since buying his Jan's Atomic Heart from him at TCAF a few years ago, and I'm always happy to find more of his work.

Howard Chaykin, who is not a creator I'm overly fond of, did entertain me with his alternate history about George Custer (he becomes President and declares war on Canada!), although I can't tell if this was a one-off or if there will be more to come.

Journeymen, by Geoffrey Thorne and Todd Harris, is interesting, with its pirates, monsters, and teleportation, but I'm not sure I'm following the whole thing properly.  Arcade Boy, by Denis Medri, is kind of cute.

The interview between Mike Richardson and Geof Darrow was interesting enough, as they share their remembrances of terrible jobs for ad companies in the 70s, and talk about meeting Moebius, but it was the kind of self-serving stuff that tanked Creator-Owned Heroes.  I'd rather have just seen more Darrow art.

Beyond that, I found this issue pretty lacklustre, and not really worth talking about.

Bite Club

Written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman
Art by David Hahn

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not exactly a fan of Howard Chaykin's work, but that usually applies to his art, and I've enjoyed his collaborator, David Tischman's writing on Fraction and Greatest Hits.  Plus, this book is drawn by David Hahn and the original comics had amazing covers by Frank Quitely, so I thought I'd check this out.

Bite Club is about a Latin American crime family in Miami, who happen to be vampires.  Vampires aren't exactly rare in this world (although, if you were to know our culture only through our popular entertainment, they aren't exactly rare here either), and people are generally accepting of them, which is kind of strange, and goes unmentioned throughout.

Anyway, the Del Toro family pretty much own Miami, although they've gotten someone mad at them, as their patriarch, Eduardo, gets killed in the first chapter.  After that, his family empire is in disarray, especially after it's discovered that he left everything to his son Leto, the only Del Toro who had left the family and entered the priesthood.  From here, the story is about Leto's wrestling with his new role, and the various problems of his two siblings, his mother, her lover, and their lawyer (it could be a Peter Greenaway movie).

The comic is entertaining enough, but I felt like the plot never gelled, and was stuck in a very episodic progression, with too many characters that needed their requisite screen time each issue, but who ultimately didn't contribute much to the story.  Hahn's a great artist, but even in his hands, this story stayed stiff and kind of artificial.  The First Second graphic novel Life Sucks covered similar ground, but with a lot more heart and heft.