Zero #1

Written by Ales Kot
Art by Michael Walsh

I was disappointed to see that Ales Kot got booted off of DC's Suicide Squad.  His Change mini-series was interesting, if a little hard to follow, but with the Squad, he was showing a new linear-ity to his writing.  On the upside, though, not writing corporate-owned comics gives more time for a book like Zero.

This first issue introduces us to Zero, a soldier who works for 'The Agency', a shadowy organization that we assume is American, but could just as well be British.  Zero has been sent to Israel to retrieve some technology that has been used to augment a Hamas soldier, who is currently in the middle of a pitched battle with one of Israel's own augmented soldiers.  Zero has disguised himself as a tank operator in the IDF, and has to figure out just how he's going to complete his mission without getting discovered.

There is a framing sequence set far into the future (the rest of the book is set a little into the future), where an aged Zero sits at the side of a cliff, with a young boy holding a gun to his head.  The rest of the comic is supposedly the story that he tells the boy, although at this point, much is left to the reader to figure out.

Kot has a good handle on the augmented soldier genre, and sets this up to be a pretty interesting story.  Michael Walsh, who did such a good job on Comeback, reminds me a lot of Paul Azaceta in this issue, and has a good feel for this sort of action.  This is a good new series.

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...

Change #4

Written by Ales Kot
Art by Morgan Jeske

I'm not ashamed to admit that by the end of Change, I really had no clue what was going on.  At the beginning of Change I was pretty lost, but this last issue threw pretty much any hope of making sense out the window, as a man with a talking tumor got eaten by some gigantic elder god and then farted out, but after a falling space capsule killed his tumor.  Oh, and some cultists stood around on the beach with an alligator wearing a suit, and a military drone came to life.  Some other stuff happened too - I just don't know what all it was.

The thing is, with Morgan Jeske's nice art, and Sloane Leong's lovely colours, I found that I didn't much care about the story - this is a comic meant to be read as a free association, Surrealist romp, and that's exactly what is was, a mix of Grant Morrison with Brendan McCarthy and Ted McKeever.  And you know, for those reasons, it's a pretty good little series.

Perhaps this book would make more sense read in one sitting, perhaps not.  Ales Kot is getting a lot of press these days, and that somehow has turned into his getting a gig on DC's Suicide Squad (which is either going to be brilliant or horrible), and his press is deserved for trying something different, even if it doesn't entirely work out in terms of clear story.  Or, the story is completely clear, and I'm just not all that smart.  I accept either interpretation...

Change #3

Written by Ales Kot
Art by Morgan Jeske

I'm going to be perfectly honest about the fact that I no longer have a clue what is going on in this book.  The first issue felt more or less straight-forward - the series was about a rapper who wants to be a movie producer, the unhappy screenwriter he can't get along with, and a weird cult that wants to kill or recruit them.  Also, there was an astronaut returning to Earth, and something big that he saw floating in the ocean.

The second issue made things a little more murky, as a great deal of space was given over to flashbacks concerning the astronaut's childhood.  Now though, things have moved into the realm of the utterly incomprehensible.  Any given page of this comic is readable and easy enough to understand, but the gestalt of all of these pages being put together makes this comic incredibly confusing.

All the same, I'm enjoying this book.  Kot is clearly a new and unique voice in comics, with little interest in telling linear stories.  It was announced this week that he is going to be taking over the DC title Suicide Squad, which I think is going to be very bizarre - nothing I've read in Change suggests that Kot is the right kind of writer for a company known for editorial interference and storylines that maintain the status quo.  That said, after reading the first few issues of Casanova, I wouldn't have thought that Matt Fraction would be the right person to write Iron Man, and that turned out quite well...

Change #2

Written by Ales Kot
Art by Morgan Jeske

Change is a very cool, if somewhat hard to follow, comic.  Ales Kot has written a kind of stream-of-consciousness, or perhaps Impressionistic story about three people who have some kind of connection to each other, but it's still not very clear what that is.

W-2, a successful rapper, escapes from a home invasion only to have his wife disappear in front of him.  He has no idea what to do, but ends up reconnecting with Sonia, a screenwriter he has just fired.  They are being pursued by the NSA, who are perhaps in league with the cultists that had just separately attacked them.  They go to a friend of W-2's for help, but a phone call W-2 takes could have changed everything.

The first issue of this series also introduced an astronaut who was returning to Earth after a very long voyage to another planet (I forget which).  We learn a lot more about him this month, through a number of flashbacks to his childhood and his relationship with a woman who left him in debt.  At least, I assume those things all happened to the astronaut.

This book is never very quick to explain itself, and the art jumps from scene to scene without making it clear that it has moved in time or place.  Kot and artist Morgan Jeske excel at creating a mood and tone through their art and story, and that seems to be of more importance than plot.

I really like Jeske's art, and I'm enjoying this story even if it's not all that easy to understand at this point.  The ad in the back promises more answers next issue, and that is something I look forward to.

Change #1

Written by Ales Kot
Art by Morgan Jeske

I'd skipped Ales Kot's debut, Wild Children, because I'd read some pretty negative reviews.  Change, his new mini-series, however, received some positive buzz, and I was attracted to Morgan Jeske's art, so I thought I'd pick this up and give it a try.

I'm not all that sure I understand what's going on in it, but I'm definitely interested.  We are introduced to three characters with this issue - W-2 is a very rich, very popular rapper, who dreams of making it big as a movie mogul.  He has an idea for a film about him and his ex-girlfriend's Cthulu-baby, but he's having a very hard time making the screenplay for it work.  He's hired Sonia, a wannabe screenwriter, but by the third page of the comic, he's fired her, and she's stolen his car.  Both of these characters end up getting attacked by what looks like cultists before the issue ends.

We also are sort-of introduced to an astronaut who is returning to Earth after having travelled to one of Jupiter's moons.  Something seems strange about him, but we don't know what just yet.

This book has a bit of a Ted McKeever vibe to it, story-wise, which means that I'm not all that surprised that I don't understand the narrative flow completely.  A second, and perhaps third reading is called for. I do like the way Kot writes this though, and I'm interested enough in the story to come back for the second issue.

A lot of the credit for that goes to Morgan Jeske, whose art reminds me of Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, and Rafael Grampá, which is high praise indeed.

There are a number of mysteries to be solved in this comic, and I do hope that the second issue works to clarify the story a little better, but I still see this as a very successful start to a new series by some new talent.