Foster Anthology 2012

Written by Brian Buccellato, Troy Peteri, Vince Hernandez, Robert Place Napton, Eric Wallace, Mike Johnson, Sterling Gates, Kyle Higgins, and Paris Buccellato
Art by Jason Copland, Noel Tuazon, Steve Buccellato, Dan Smith, Don Hudson, Aaron Gillespie, Hector Collazo, Rod Reis, Karl Altstaetter, and Paris Buccellato

When I was at TCAF (the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the best comics show you'll ever attend) in 2012, I bought the first two issues of Foster from Noel Tuazon, the series artist.  I really enjoyed these two books, which are set in Vintage City, a down and dirty American city that looks and feels like it got stuck in the grimier part of the 1970s.  Vintage City has all of the usual problems of an American city, but is also home to a large group of Dwellers, mysterious and shadowy creatures who are descended from Cro Magnon man (if I remember it correctly), and who live in secret.

The series is about a guy, Foster, who is trying to protect his young neighbour, who is half-Dweller, from them.  I liked the books, and was pretty happy to see that the series was being solicited by Diamond, although nothing past the first issue ever came out.  It's possible to buy 'convention editions' off of writer Brian Buccellato's site, but they're kind of expensive.

Anyway, I was at the Toronto Comicon last weekend, and saw that Tuazon was selling copies of the Foster Anthology, a Kickstarter project that Buccellato made.  This book has a number of short stories set in the Foster universe, by a number of different creators.

The best stories are the ones set in various historical periods.  Buccellato writes a story (drawn by Jason Copland, of Murder Book fame) about an attempt at a military alliance between Ancient Rome and the Dwellers.  Troy Peteri and Tuazon have a very nice story about a trapper in the 19th Century who runs into the Dwellers in the woods.  I also really enjoyed Kyle Higgins's story about a cab driver in Vintage City who won't pick up Dwellers.  Rod Reis's art in this story reminds me of Bill Sienkiewicz around the time he was doing Elektra Assassin.

It is my hope that the Foster series will get collected into a trade format soon, as I'd really like to see how the story ends (and am not interested in reading it digitally).

Elephantmen #15

Written by Richard Starkings
Art by Ian Churchill, Boo Cook, and Steve Buccellato

As Richard Starkings promised in his very informative comment to my review of Elephantmen #14, this title looks to be back on track in terms of being a monthly comic again, which is great news. In this issue, we come to a resolution of a long-running story, which started before the jump to the War Toys mini-series.

Strangely, this resolution seems to involve a lot of naked Elephantmen running around a hospital late one night. Thankfully, we didn't have to see all of what Miki saw, especially since we probably wouldn't have responded with the same level of excitement.....

I do have a few questions about what happened in-between scenes in this issue, especially between Sahara and Serenghetti. It doesn't seem likely that he would have just let her go so easily. I'm hoping that a future issue will return to this night, and explain a little more of what happened. I'm also curious to see what happens with Tusk in the near future.

I like the look of Boo Cook over Ian Churchill. It works really well in this issue. There is also a back-up story featuring Vanity Case, which helps to explain her back story, and is nicely drawn by Steve Buccellato. My copy had a mis-print in that the cover was stapled on upside-down (or is that backwards?), but it didn't affect my reading....