Life Sucks

Written by Jessica Abel and Gabe Soria
Art by Warren Pleece

This is a fantastic little graphic novel that came out with very little fanfare, and was criminally overlooked.

Life Sucks is Twilight meets Clerks.  In the Life Sucks world, classic Old World vampires sire themselves slave to run their business empires while they hang out in a wood-paneled club-house hidden in a scary old castle.  Dave is stuck working for Lord (Radu) Arisztidescu at his all-night convenience store, where among other things, he sells 'Blood Beer' and 'Blood Orange Juice' to a certain select group of customers.  Dave has to do his master's bidding, and so he is trapped in this menial job.

One of his closest friends is a vampire working for one of Radu's friends, as his Wes, his nemesis.  Dave's roommate is not a vampire, but is fully aware of his friend's status as a 'vegetarian vampire', refusing to hunt and drinking only blood bank blood.  Dave has fallen hard for Rosa, a local Goth girl who festishizes vampire culture.

The majority of the story deals with Dave's building up the nerve to begin to talk to Rosa, only to have Wes declare his interest in her.  In many ways, this book reads like a very intelligent sitcom, with the rivals competing for the girl's attention.  There are tons of small touches that are quite amusing, and the characters are very likeable.

A lot of credit has to go to Warren Pleece, who has never failed to deliver when working on a character-driven comic.  This is a fun, and funny, book, which should be adapted into film or would work well as the basis of a television series.

Dead Enders Vol. 1: Stealing the Sun

Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Warren Pleece and Richard Case

I had no idea that this title lasted for something like 16 issues, and that only the first four were ever collected in a trade. This book originally came out during a time where my comics buying was quite limited, and so it stayed below my radar, until I became more familiar with Brubaker's work.

It's a very different title from what you would expect from this writer. Dead Enders is set in a post-cataclysmic future, where rich and poor are divided into different sectors, with the wealthy being able to enjoy artificial weather, while the poor suffer from gray skies and any number of environmental illnesses.

The story centres around Beezer, a drug-dealer and neo-mod (for lack of a better term). Beezer has this strange habit of seeing visions of the past, and has managed to draw the attention of some government guy, who is looking to make use of his abilities (this is never really made clear). This brings police to Beezer's home, where they find his drug stash, sending him on the run.

Dead Enders is very much about Beezer's friendships and his tempestuous relationship with Sophie, his girlfriend. When his closest friend, Jasper, is injured during a repo job, Beezer sets out to make his last days pleasurable.

Not a lot happens in this volume, but at the same time, Brubaker packs a lot of story and world-building into a small space. Other writers, these days, would take six to eight issues to accomplish what he manages in four.

The art, by Warren Pleece, looks quite nice, although Richard Case's inks make his art look quite different from his work on Kinetic. My biggest art complaint would be that the colour of Beezer's hair kept changing, making me wonder if he was the same character or someone else in places.

This was an enjoyable book, and I think I may now be on the look-out for the single issues, which are unlikely to ever get reprinted in trade form.

Kinetic

Written by Kelley Puckett
Art by Warren Pleece with Garry Leach

Lately I've been working my way through the short-lived DC Focus line, and I must say that I really missed out by not picking these comics up when they were first published. These were some very nicely designed, nicely written comics.

Kinetic is about Tom, a seventeen year old high school student with a number of dangerous medical conditions. He's a hemophiliac, diabetic, and due to his monomyelic amyotrophy, he can not move his right arm. He has been raised in an environment of fear and isolation, looked after by his well-meaning but over-protective mother. High school, obviously, has been hell for him.

Somehow, early into the book, Tom suddenly develops super strength and invulnerability. There is no explanation as to how this happens; he gets hit by a truck, and the truck wraps itself around him. From that point, everything is different for Tom, although he has no idea how to live in a world that now can't hurt him.

Puckett keeps the story grounded in the real world. Tom still goes to school, and still fantasizes about beating up bullies and sweeping the perfect girl off her feet. He has a hard time adjusting to things, and it becomes clear that he has never learned how to interact with his world. Also fascinating is the way his mother reacts to things; she has spent 17 years worrying about her kid, and finds his new abilities as liberating as he does.

The book is coloured with just reds and blues (and in one scene, some green), an odd but effective choice. The covers for the first five or six issues were by Tomer Hanuka, which is always a nice treat.

The true strength of this book lies in Warren Pleece's drawings. His teenagers look like real teenagers, and he has an eye for the way people actually wear clothes (quite rare in comics really). He excels at showing the subtle shifts in Tom's moods through his facial expressions, and is able to convey his mother's perpetual state of worry easily.

Lucifer Volume 1: Devil in the Gateway

Written by Mike Carey
Art by Scott Hampton, Chris Weston, James Hodgkins, Warren Pleece and Dean Ormston

When "Lucifer" began, I remember thinking to myself that it was just an attempt to cash in on The Sandman, and having not been familiar with Mike Carey, I never even gave it a look. More recently, having enjoyed "Crossing Midnight", "Unwritten", and some of Carey's other work, I decided it was time to go back and give this title a shot.

The first volume is made up of the original three-issue mini-series, the first three-issue arc of the main title, and a one-off story. Each tale has different artists, although all three stories fit nicely into the usual styles one sees with Vertigo books.

In the first arc, Lucifer is pressed into the service of Heaven, to track down and deal with an 'old' god, who is granting wishes of a dangerous nature. This causes him to make a trip back to Hell, more to establish the series than for any real story purpose, before he goes on a pilgrimage of sorts with a half-Indian girl. The story reads well, and definitely does its job of establishing Lucifer as a right bastard.

In the second arc, he goes to Germany to consult with a living deck of Tarot cards kept under lock and key by a fellow angel, who also collects books. He keeps a shabby used bookstore, which is really a library of Borgesian proportions. This arc also features (because it's set in Germany) a gay Pakistani, neo-Nazis, and cabaret performers. I'm not sure where the beer wenches were - maybe they'll be in the sequel. This was a good story too, and Carey uses it to preview, by way of talking Tarot divination, much of what I assume will come in future volumes.

The final story is the best in the book. In it, a young girl with various mystical abilities attempts to solve the mystery of her friend's murder, accompanied by the spirit of that friend. That the girl meets with Lucifer is not much of a surprise. This story, more than any other, reminded me of those odd moments in Gaiman's "Sandman" where some character would end up meeting Morpheus only towards the end of their story, thereby explaining why the story was in the book in the first place.

I am intrigued by Carey's take on this character, and will continue to work through the series.