Snapshot #1

Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Jock

I have very fond memories of Diggle and Jock's Vertigo series The Losers, which dealt with a group of American operatives who had to go underground after they discovered corruption in their leadership.  It was a taut military black ops thriller, at least until it started getting kind of strange towards the end.

Anyway, I was excited to see that the pair have teamed up again for a new series, which is much more urbane and grounded in a day-to-day existence that would be familiar to many comics readers.

Jake is a comics store clerk who, while biking to work one day, finds a smartphone lying on the ground in Golden Gate Park.  After opening his store, and chatting with his customer/friend Steve, he discovers a number of disturbing pictures on the phone, which suggest that a murder has taken place.  When the phone rings, he answers it, and when told he is speaking to the police, he immediately gives his name and location.  Of course, it's not actually a cop who comes to pick up the phone, but a man with a gun.

Jake finally figures out that things aren't right, and he gets out of there.  When the cops aren't interested in helping him, and in fact return the phone to the man in the pictures (who is very clearly not dead), Jake and Steve end up searching the guy's apartment, where of course, they discover a body.

I like the storytelling in this book, but there are a few things that are just too hard to overlook.  I would think that anyone who has read as many comics as Steve and Jake have would not so quickly put themselves into the kinds of situations that fuel hundreds of horror and thriller stories.  One would expect them to act in a more self-preserving way.

Still, now that things are underway, I expect that this book will get better.  Jock's art is always terrific, but I think I like it better in black and white.

Scalped #60

Written by Jason Aaron
Art by RM Guera

Scalped is a rare book in so many ways.  It's become increasingly rare for a Vertigo title to live for sixty issues, with only The Unwritten and American Vampire poised to last as long (Fables and Hellblazer don't count, as neither one of them is likely to ever reach a story ending), especially with the consistently unspectacular sales that this book brought in (which has never made sense to me).

Scalped is rare for other reasons though.  It is a crime comic set on a poor First Nations Reserve in the American Southwest - a setting so far outside of the mainstream as you can get, while still being in America.  The series featured First Nations characters in a variety of roles - good, bad, and endlessly complex, something that is rarely done in any form of media in North America.  It showed the desperate poverty of reserve communities, and never shied away from depictions of drug and alcohol abuse, family instability, and many of the other problems that plague Aboriginal communities.

More than that though, it showed the community as real.  People in this comic do some pretty awful things, but they also turn around and surprise the reader with their kindness, compassion, dignity, and fortitude.  Over the years there have been charges of appropriation of voice levelled against Jason Aaron, which is a serious issue when depicting Aboriginal characters, but I believe Aaron did an excellent job.

A big part of why I say that is because I felt a genuine sadness in finishing this book, knowing that I won't be seeing these characters again.  There aren't too many series I can think of where this has happened to me.  I miss Yorick and 355 from Y the Last Man, Zee from DMZ, and a few of the characters that have been killed off in The Walking Dead, but there are a number of characters in Scalped that I began to feel real affection for, the same way I miss characters like Bubbles, Omar, and Wallace from The Wire.  (Is that sappy?  I often feel the same way about the characters of a really good book, but you don't spend five to six years with a novel.)

And therein lies the strength of Scalped.  Aaron created more than a kick-ass crime story, and his use of secondary characters transcended the travails of Dash Bad Horse and Lincoln Red Crow, the two central figures in this story.  It's the background folk that I grew to love.  Carol's transformation over the course of the series made me happy and proud of her, while Dino Poor Bear's made me very sad.  I'm going to miss Granny Poor Bear and Lester Falls Down.  These are some great characters.

This final issue closes off the book perfectly.  The final confrontation between Dash, Lincoln, Catcher, and Agent Nitz ends just as you would expect it to, and the survivors are left appropriately.  Aaron doesn't go in for the happy ending (except for Carol), but he does go for the correct ending.

I've felt for a long time that Dash stopped being the main character of the book before it reached its second year; really, this entire comic is about the redemption and growth of Red Crow.  He is one of the most nuanced and complex characters ever created in comics, and I love seeing where Aaron left him at the end of this book.

This series has featured a few great artists, but it is RM Guera who has worked on the lion's share of issues, who gave it its distinct look and feel.  Guera's rough art created just the right atmosphere for the Prairie Rose Reserve, and I look forward to seeing what projects he works on next.  This series has also featured some amazing covers by Jock, an artist who I consider to be one of the top three cover artists (with Brian Bolland and Dave Johnson)  I love the way this final issue's cover echoes the one he made for the first issue.

It is my hope that we will see these creators working on something that they own again.  I have yet to read anything by Jason Aaron at Marvel that matches or even comes close to matching the intelligence, balance, and insight of this series.  If you've never read Scalped, I urge you to start at the beginning.  I also kind of envy you the opportunity.

Hellblazer: Pandemonium

Written by Jamie Delano
Art by Jock

It's nice to see Delano come back and write John Constantine again in this original graphic novel.  Delano didn't create the character, but he did write the first pile of issues of the comic, and worked to establish Hellblazer as the flagship Vertigo title, not to mention its longest lasting.

In this book, Delano returns Constantine to his classic form - he's wearing the trenchcoat, smoking, and bossing poor Chas around like it's still the early nineties.  John sees and becomes interested in a woman wearing a niqab on the tube, and follows her to the British Museum just in time for bombs to go off and pandemonium to break loose.  It turns out that the woman is working for British Intelligence, and soon enough, John and her are off to Baghdad to deal with a man in American custody who seems connected to the supernatural.

What unfolds is a fairly typical Constantine story, complete with a stint in Hell and a demonic game of poker.  Delano writes a great Constantine - the off-hand cruelty and manipulation are front and centre - and it's nice to see John interact with such a different world.  Lately, Delano's writing has become increasing purple (read his Rawbone - it's out of control), although he keeps a handle on it here.

Jock's art is always great.  I love his panel design and the way in which he constructs a page.  This is a good book.