Best Wishes

Written by Mike Richardson
Art by Paul Chadwick

I consider Paul Chadwick to be one of the best straight-up comics artists in the business, so of course I wanted to read Best Wishes, his collaboration with Dark Horse president Mike Richardson.

This is a slightly odd magical realist series about work and relationships in New York City.  An old and ornate fountain is moved from Italy to New York's Central Park, but no one is aware of the fact that it might have some magical properties to it.  Cal is a struggling graphic designer who can't seem to break into the industry.  Mary is a struggling young woman who can't shake the feeling that her boyfriend, Josh, a famous quarterback, doesn't really love her.  When Cal and Mary make wishes in the fountain at the same time, their desires get mixed up.

In no time, Mary's random napkin doodle gets chosen as the new symbol of New York City, propelling her to the recognition and job that Cal wanted for himself.  When Cal meets Josh in an elevator while on his way to a job interview with Mary, Josh is not sure how to deal with the feelings that he starts to develop for the young man.  In no time, these three characters find themselves in a weird triangle of envy and desire.

I like the way that this book portrays the difficulty of simply living in New York City, as the characters struggle to make ends meet, and even acts of generosity don't extend further than the closest Ikea.  These characters, and the people that surround them, are very well-realized, and the implausible aspects of this story don't get in the way of enjoying their travails.

Of course, this book is so capably drawn that I'm sure it inspired the kind of envy that Cal shows throughout the book.  Chadwick is a treasure - he makes emotionally complex scenes clear and easy to understand.  I'm glad that Richardson is able to make sure that stories like this get told.  This was a quiet book that didn't make much of a splash, but is really worth taking a look at.

Harlan Ellison's 7 Against Chaos

Written by Harlan Ellison
Art by Paul Chadwick

As much as I've always recognized Harlan Ellison's importance to science fiction as a genre, I've barely read more than a handful of his stuff over the years.  The news that he had a graphic novel coming out from DC featuring his own characters interested me, but then I saw that Paul Chadwick was going to draw it, and getting a copy became a certainty.  I love Chadwick's Concrete, and have been hoping to see more work from him.

7 Against Chaos is kind of a strange graphic novel.  I originally assumed from the title that it would be yet another take on Seven Samurai, but it really isn't.  A mysterious hooded character takes he first third of the book to put together a team of strange characters from a number of different planets in our solar system.  All of these people are in trouble when the hooded guy shows up - one is a genetically modified (reordered) miner with metal pincer hands, another a faceless thief, another a sentient robot, an insect guy, and a woman who will burst into flames if she touches another human being).

Eventually, we find out what the mission is - this team is needed to go back in time to man's earliest days, to put a stop to an effort being made by the lizard-being Erisssa to replace mankind with evolved reptiles.  The story is a lot more complex than that - each character is given enough space to develop fully, and Ellison has a good time exploring the ramifications of time travel and how to make some of these concepts work on the page.

The graphic novel has a retro feel to its art.  Paul Chadwick fills it with designs that could have come from the heyday of 50s science fiction magazines, but the book still feels very modern.

Perhaps it's just the inclusion of the character Tantalus, who looks like a human-sized preying mantis and is reminiscent of Bug, but this comic reminded me a lot of the classic Micronauts series.  It has the same general feel of a multi-world system that has gone wrong, and that none of the characters will necessarily stick around through the whole thing.

I think that this was originally written to be a four-issue mini-series (perhaps in the prestige format) because there are a few places where the story gets kind of recapped immediately after a big moment, and am a little curious to know the history of how this project came about (especially because this is not the kind of thing that DC usually publishes, and it didn't get a lot of hype when it was released in 2013.

Dark Horse Presents #21

Written by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Michael Avon Oeming, Geoffrey Thorne, Neil Gaiman, Shaun Manning, Denis Medri, Corinna Bechko, Gabriel Hardman, Simon Roy, Duane Swierczynski, Shannon Wheeler, and Carla Speed McNeil
Art by Steve Lieber, Michael Avon Oeming, Todd Harris, Paul Chadwick, Andrew Drilon, Denis Medri, Gabriel Hardman, Simon Roy, Eric Nguyen, Shannon Wheeler, and Carla Speed McNeil

I really don't understand the thinking here.  This issue of Dark Horse Presents has a story written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Paul Chadwick, and yet the cover is given over to Caitlin Kiernan's middling Alabaster series, which has been running for a while, and is not all that interesting.  Sure Gaiman and Chadwick get their names on the cover, in rather small print, but I would think that picking any of Chadwick's beautiful splash pages, and putting Gaiman's name in larger print under the comic's title, would have grabbed a lot more new readers at the comics store.  Their story is quite wonderful - a bit of a prose poem about the different ways the world can end, with a last one that is most devastating, and most personal.

Other than that, this is again a pretty mixed-bag issue of DHP.  There's a new chapter of Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil, which is the main reason why I buy this book.  I was disappointed to see that the story ends with the words "The End", and I'm hoping that refers to this 'Third World' storyline, and not the end of McNeil's regular contributions to this book.

Simon Roy, the brilliant semi-regular artist of Image's Prophet, and Jan's Atomic Heart, debuts his new story, Tiger Lung, here.  We don't know a lot from this first chapter, except that the story involves a young man journeying deep into an ice cave or glacier, despite the protestations of his people.  I love Roy's work, and can't wait to see where this leads.

Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman's Station to Station ends this issue.  It's been a good story, with a real BPRD feel to it, but I think it didn't really get enough space to breathe in these few chapters.  I just like looking at Hardman's art though.

Denis Medri starts off his Arcade Boy story here, and it's a fun look at teenager-dom and video games, set in a near-future that has hoverboards!  It's kind of derivative, but enjoyable.  I've never read work by Shannon Wheeler before, and I enjoyed the first chapter of Villain House, which has a pair of supervillains breaking out of jail.

Beyond that, there's not much to say.  Journeyman continues, and grabs my attention a little more than the first chapter did.  X is finally over, and Michael Avon Oeming's The Victories continues to do absolutely nothing for me.

Dark Horse Presents #3

Written by Dave Gibbons, Robert Love, David Walker, Carla Speed McNeil, Paul Chadwick, Howard Chaykin, Jim Steranko, Patrick Alexander, Richard Corben, Chuck Brown, David Chelsea, Neal Adams, and Michael T. Gilbert
Art by Dave Gibbons, Robert Love, Carla Speed McNeil, Paul Chadwick, Howard Chaykin, Jim Steranko, Patrick Alexander, Richard Corben, Sanford Greene, David Chelsea, Neal Adams, and Michael T. Gilbert

There are a lot of comics in this book.  This issue of DHP, while keeping it's $7.99 price point, increased its page count to 104 pages, which is appreciated, as that is a nice chunk of comics to digest.  I do wish I liked all of them though...

Dave Gibbons 'Treatment' is not bad.  Really, it's a lot like Archaia's French reprint comic Cyclops, starring a group of SWAT-like police officers who are broadcast live on a mix between a football game and a reality show.  It may be an interesting idea, but it's going to need more developing than we get in this first installment (I assume there will be more).

As always, the two stand outs in this book are Paul Chadwick's Concrete, and Carla Speed McNeil's Finder.  In Concrete, Chadwick addresses the issue of unjustified police tasering.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but the best Concrete comics are the ones that have the stone giant explore a social issue that doesn't often get much play, especially in comics.  Chadwick's environmental stance had a huge influence on me when I was younger, and it's nice to see that he's still using his work as an engine for some kind of social change.  I think this may meander a little too close to being preachy, but I admire Concrete's usual stance that there can be a better way of doing things than what is current practice.

Finder is incredible.  Having read Voice, the most recent graphic novel, I now get a lot more of the context of this DHP strip, and I'm loving it.  In this chapter, Jaeger helps an old lady who has missed her train stop by taking her through a short-cut which crosses the incredible city that McNeil has built.  The story ends on a pretty creepy note that I thought was very effective.

I'm enjoying Love and Walker's Number 13.  There is more happening in this chapter that is getting me interested in this post-apocalyptic story, and I'm curious to read what's going to happen next.  Also, I've been enjoying Richard Corben's pieces, although I found this month's to be a little disjointed.

Beyond that, the book becomes kind of mediocre.  I know this may be sacrilegious to many comics fans, but I didn't feel Steranko's Red Tide excerpt much at all.  For all his bombast about his own ingenuity, he's written a fairly standard and cliche-ridden private detective prose story, which is only marginally assisted by his art.  I don't think I'll be looking for the full book when it comes out.

Howard Chaykin's Marked Man is growing on me a little, but I still don't like his art.  Likewise, Neal Adams's Blood continues to be incomprehensible and way over-written, but pretty.  I find Brown and Greene's Rotten Apple, which debuted last issue, to be pretty incomprehensible too.  Snow Angel, which I found refreshing earlier, doesn't even appear to have a point this month.  It's pretty rambling.  And, after having been burned last time, I didn't even bother to read Michael T. Gilbert's Mr. Monster.

Dark Horse Presents #2

Written by Paul Chadwick, Robert Love, David Walker, Neal Adams, Carla Speed McNeil, Howard Chaykin, Michael T. Gilbert, Patrick Alexander, Chuck Brown, Richard Corben, and David Chelsea

Art by Paul Chadwick, Robert Love, Neal Adams, Carla Speed McNeil, Howard Chaykin, Michael T. Gilbert, Patrick Alexander, Sanford Greene, Richard Corben, and David Chelsea

It's pretty difficult to look at an anthology like DHP, which has no unifying theme, as a single, whole entity.  It's easier to break it down into its components and review them individually.  I will say that I still wish there was more originality to the book - as much as I love things like Concrete and stories by Richard Corben, I'd like to read the next big thing even more.

Concrete - I'm always happy to read a new Concrete story, although I thought this one was kind of strange, with its hinting that the aliens that made Concrete could be returning, and Maureen's explorations of the roots of religion.  I think it should have been a bit longer, but mostly that's because I'd much prefer a new Concrete mini-series.

Number 13 - This appears to be a pretty cool post-apocalyptic story about a young kid who is a cyborg or bioweapon or something, and the three-eyed girl he rescues from an ogre.  There's not much more than establishment going on here, but it's pretty interesting.

Blood - I'm not sure why Neal Adams thinks that he should be writing without some help.  This story shifts from what looked like a crime-fighting thing to a combination of The Secret History and I Am Legion, but not as good.  Just wordy.  Adams's terrific art does not make up for the story.

Finder - The Finder stories in this series so far are becoming favourites of mine.  It's the first I've read of McNeil's series (I do have the Voice graphic novel in my to-read pile), so while I'm not sure of the context, I am finding it amusing to explore her world through the eyes of a courier.

Marked Man - This is still not doing it for me (mostly because of Chaykin's art, which is better here than his recent New Avengers work), but I found the second chapter of this 'career criminal as family man' story to be better than the first.

Mr. Monster - I find this kind of thing unreadable, and therefore did not read it.  I'm still impressed with myself for making it through the first chapter...

The Wraith - This is also not really kind of thing - I guess it's cute, but it doesn't fit with the rest of the stuff in this book.

Rotten Apple - Now this is a new entry that has some promise.  Brown and Greene are building an interesting world populated by rival zombie gangs, religious orders, and cartoon animal mercenaries.  I think that this would have benefited from more space to build the setting, but I like Greene's art and am curious to see where the story goes.

Murky World: The Treasure - Richard Corben stories don't have to make a lot of sense, because they are always so well-drawn.  This chapter has our hero get tricked by the women he helped last time, and we meet a gigantic monstrous cabbie.  This is good stuff.

Snow Angel - In the first issue, I found this story to be pretty charming, but this chapter is just kind of cute.  I can see getting tired of Snow Angel - a girl who gains powers when she lies in the snow.

Dark Horse Presents #1

by a lot of different people

Well, that was kind of disappointing.  I loved the original Dark Horse Presents series (and its companion, Cheval Noir), which I can credit with introducing me to a large number of new creators, characters, and series.  Its diverse selection always held something to enjoy, and while there were stories I didn't like, I don't think there was ever an issue where I didn't find something to enjoy.  The Myspace DHP of recent years was a less satisfying grab bag, but still managed to entertain me in its collected editions.

I was very excited to learn of this new, quarterly edition of the title, in an eighty-page format.  Sure, the price is higher, but with its publication schedule, that wouldn't cost more than a monthly would.

This first issue is good in plenty of places, but I feel like Dark Horse missed an opportunity here by focusing so strongly on the past.  The book opens with a Concrete story by Paul Chadwick, and then goes on to feature work by Howard Chaykin, Neal Adams, Michael T. Gilbert, Richard Corben, Paul Gulacy, and Harlan Ellison.  In other words, this could have been an issue of the original run.  The strength of DHP was that it uncovered new creators.  Okay, this issue also has the first Finder story I remember ever reading (granted, that series has been running for like 20 years too), and features work by David Chelsea, who is new to me.

The point is that, while comics fan are notorious for looking to the past and living in a nostalgic world, there is also a market for work that is more forward-looking, and talented up and comers need more platforms that will lead to greater exposure.

As for the actual content of the book, it's pretty varied.  The Concrete story is great, of course, as are Corben's barbarian and zombie story, and Ellison's interesting prose story.  I liked Carla Speed McNeil's Finder (I should totally start reading that series), and found Chelsea's Snow Angel story charming.

I can't stand Howard Chaykin, especially when he writes his own stories, and so wasn't surprised that I disliked his Marked Man.  Neal Adam's Blood was overly wordy and kind of ridiculous (not all that unlike his Batman: Odyssey), and the Frank Miller interview felt like filler.  The Star Wars story left me cold, despite some nice Gulacy artwork.

I'm hoping that future issues do a better job of finding a balance between commercial appeal, support of Dark Horse's licensed properties, and innovative comics.