Saucer Country #11

Written by Paul Cornell
Art by Mirko Colak and Andrea Mutti

It was announced recently that Saucer Country, like every Vertigo book that I enjoy not called The Unwritten, is going to be ending in a few issues.  Knowing that, and knowing that Paul Cornell doesn't have the space to tell the end of the story the way he would like to, I would have expected the pace of these last few issues to pick up, but that is not the case here, as he instead introduces a completely different element to the series.

Michael is Governor Alvarado's ex-husband, her close friend, and the person that was with her when she was abducted by aliens.  We've seen him as a self-pitying drunk, and we know that he has been manipulated to believe that he was behind the recent assassination attempts on Alvarado and her security team.  What we didn't know is that as a child, he saw and spoke to fairies.

This issue opens with Michael and Arcadia visiting the farmland in Colorado where he grew up.  He talks about how he and his older sister made up imaginary stories about fairies, and how one day, the fairies appeared to them as real creatures.  Their appearance also helped solve a different problem for Michael's sister.

This is an odd issue.  I'm not sure how it fits into the larger story, which has dealt with alien abduction and governmental conspiracy.  Paul Cornell makes a thematic connection by discussing how the 90s were all about recovered memories of child abuse, while the 10s appear to be about conspiracy at higher levels as a way to explain society's and individual peoples' problems.

This issue is drawn by Mirko Colak and Andrea Mutti, who have a very different style than regular series artist Ryan Kelly.  The book looks very nice, but I do prefer the way Kelly draws Arcadia, with a little more weight and gravitas behind her.

I'm sad to hear that this series is ending soon, but I know that I'm going to enjoy what's left of it.

Right State

Written by Mat Johnson
Art by Andrea Mutti

Right State is a unique political thriller that works well, but probably could have worked a lot better.  It's set at some unspecified after the Obama administration has finished its second term, and was met with some sort of disaster or fiasco which is not explained.  At the point where this book opens, Obama's successor, also a Democrat and also black, is in the midst of running for a second term.  America has become even more divided than it is now between 'red' and 'blue', and the militia movement has gained in strength to a great degree.

The story is centred on Ted Akers, a right-wing talking head who has spent most of his life fighting for veterans' rights on Fox News like cable channels, despite having never fought in a war.  Akers gets contacted by the Secret Service when they receive word that a militia group known as Roots of Liberty, run by a demagogue named Dutton, are planning something for the President's upcoming open-air address to the nation.

The Service figures that Akers would have a better chance of infiltrating the group, especially since the agent in charge is a Muslim, and that's basically the set up for this story.  It's not terribly plausible, is it? And therein lies one of this book's two big faults.  The second is that Akers's character is not developed very well before he gets sent off to crazy-land.  It's hard to understand why he'd be working to help an administration he's fundamentally opposed to, just as it is hard to understand why they would really want him (unless you figure out where things are going pretty early into the book, as I did).

As a Canadian, I do enjoy fiction that shows just how messed up American often is (while knowing we aren't all that much better, and increasingly so), and the Roots of Liberty crowd is pretty interesting.  My problem was that because I never bought into the plot or the main character, I never got all that wrapped up in the book.  Mat Johnson's first graphic novel, Incognegro, was riveting; this one felt a little rushed, like it needed to be out before the American election, and therefore didn't get workshopped or edited as stringently as it should have.

There was definitely a lot of potential in this story, and some of the sequences near the end get exciting, but this book just never gripped me as much as it could have.  Part of the problem is with Andrea Mutti's art - he's a talented artist, but often stiff in his layouts, and it's not always easy to tell which character is which.  I hope that Johnson's next book is something a little closer to home, and therefore perhaps as strong as his debut was.

The Executor

Written by Jon Evans
Art by Andrea Mutti

I'm of two minds when it comes to this graphic novel.  The Executor is about an ex-NHL goon who retired early due to a knee injury.  He gets a phone call telling him that his old high-school girlfriend had died, and that she unexpectedly named him the executor of her estate, which forces him to return to Elora New York, the small town where he grew up, and where he is still seen by many as a local hero.

Shortly upon arriving in town, he begins to expect that the girl's death wasn't an accident, and he begins digging around for some facts.  Elora is a typical small upstate New York town, with a Mohawk Reserve on its border.  It seems that the ex-girlfriend was dating a member of the band, and was helping the tribe with some land claims thing (which is never elucidated upon).  As Joe, our hero, distributes her meager funds to her inheritors, he meets with Dia, a local Mohawk crime boss who lives in a guarded estate on Reserve property, and apparently smuggles stuff to and from Canada.  Dia had a little brother who was killed a long time ago, and Joe seems to know something about it.

From there, the book becomes quite intriguing, as Joe's secrets are cast into new light by other information, and the plot thickens to involve a missing man accused of kidnapping his daughter, a pedophile ring, an abandoned mine, and years of lying.  It's maybe more than the book can support, and there are many places where the writing feels illogical or the pacing is off.

Not helping matters is the art of Andrea Mutti.  He's very good at drawing figures, but I often found his storytelling to be a little confusing and unclear.  I know that Vertigo is increasingly relying on artists from Italy to draw their books (I always assume it's an economic thing), but I think that Mutti should have perhaps spent a little more time researching or referencing the things he's drawing.  The hockey players appear to be playing with field hockey sticks at times, and there's a scene where much is made about how good a pumpkin pie is, yet the pie shown has a layer of crust on top.  These are all minor quibbles, but they were enough to toss me out of the story a couple of times.

Still, this is a decent read.  I found that I got pretty absorbed in the story, and didn't want to stop reading until I knew the ending.  This is Evans's first comic from what I can tell, and it's always good to see a local writer get some attention.

DMZ #55

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Andrea Mutti

Some of my favourite issues of DMZ are the ones that don't have any trace of Matty Roth in them.  The guy can be a little exhausting sometimes, and it's nice to get some other perspectives on life in the DMZ.

This time around, the protagonist is Cal Foster, a military operative - no rank or organization is given - whose job is to infiltrate the DMZ and locate targets for an American bombing campaign.  He is not able to get out of the area before the bombs start falling, and instead takes refuge in the subway tunnels, where he runs into Zee and some other locals.

Demonstrating her two best traits - intuition and trust - Zee chooses not to expose Cal's job, instead allowing him to stay among them, even though he has been trained to kill any locals who discover his true identity.  What follows is a meditation on responsibility during war, and the conflicting nature of military duty to one's duty to his fellow man.

Wood is joined by Andrea Mutti, yet another Italian artist hired by Vertigo.  It seems like they have an endless supply of Italian talent, who more or less draw in a very similar style.  His art here looks a lot like Burchielli's, as if a guest inker were used.  This is a decent issue, even if it's a quick read.