I gotta say, I’m pretty proud of us for actually seeing through this commitment for a weekly comic blog post. This makes two in a row! One more, and it’s called a streak! Egads! So what did we love in the wonderful world of comics this week?
Myles:
Horror comics are tough. Heck, horror fiction is tough. But when you’re working in a visual medium that doesn’t move, you can’t rely on the jump-scare in the same way a cheap film can. Many horror comics huddle close to excessive violence and gore, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t unnerve me. It doesn’t haunt me. It doesn’t horrify me. Cullen Bunn and artist Tyler Crook understand this completely in Dark Horse’s Harrow County #1. What’s so impressive about Bunn’s writing is how natural it is. As a South Carolina native, it’s easy to tell when someone’s just injecting redneckisms and when someone legitimately captures the language as it is, especially in period piece. Bunn didn’t grow up too far for me, so it’s not entirely surprising that he nails it completely. That said, the language is so natural that I never once thought “Oh, this writer’s doing a Southern voice.” Additionally, the story spins it’s yarn at a very elaborate pace, allowing it to seep into the reader’s mind. Showing and not telling is very important in horror, and Bunn reserves just the right amount of detail to allow the eeriness ooze through the scenes.
However, given that this is comics, you need the right artist to accompany the writer for the job. To say Tyler Crook is the right artist would be a gross understatement. Each page is, quite simply, a master stroke of storytelling. Crook manages to convey in four panels what would likely take at least thirty pages of prose. His ingenious, malleable style stood out to me the most: simple and taught when needed in the quiet moments, but at the turn of a page you could have a complexly detailed sprawl filled to the brim with nasty little details. The watercolor-esque style adds the right amount of mood without ever feeling like its sacrificing clarity like some work does. Every single line comes off as deliberate. Stunning work. Absolutely stunning.
I’ve left out the crux of the plot on purpose. This is a horror story, or, as Dark Horse explains, “a southern gothic fairy tale.” The less you know going in, the better.
Drew:
Here’s a spoiler warning for the future of this little project: If a new Saga issue comes out it’s gonna be my pick. Sorry? Not sorry. Can’t help it. I’m way too invested in these characters. Where the last issue was more focused on Marko and his crew, this issue spreads the story across all three of the current groupings of characters. Marko and Prince Robot IV run afoul of King Robot’s forces, Alana makes a plea to her kidnapper to turn against their new combined captors, and a new face surprises the Freelancers as they continue to search for a way to heal The Will.
I’ve been reading Saga since it began. One of the main things that got me so involved in this story, aside from the reputation of Brian K. Vaughan, was that it’s ultimately a story about new parents. At the time, my son had been born shortly before the first issue came out, so Hazel (our narrator and the child of the book) has typically been depicted as being around the same age as my son. Granted, my wife and I didn’t come from different sides of an interstellar war that’s been going on for as long as anyone can remember, but it when Hazel is placed in any kind of danger I feel it. But this does a little more. Vaughan takes these opportunities to show real life parenting experiences through the lens of these people on the run in their space tree. Previous arcs have had our characters struggle to find a home to escape from danger, to learn to deal with in-laws who hold different values, and most recently the struggle to keep a relationship going with all of the weight and stress of working to provide for a family. This arc has brought things back into a more epic scale as half our family has been kidnapped and the other half is searching the galaxy to find them, which is a nice change of pace from the “homestead” arc we just got through.
Fiona Staples continues to be a rock star talent. She somehow manages to take off the wall concepts like spider people and tv-headed royal families and spaceship trees and make them feel everyday. This is a lived in world, a fantastical off the wall lived in world that I can’t get enough of seeing. Also Ghüs. He’s adorable and should be on everything. So, next month expect me to just copy and paste this. And every month after that.
Patrick:
I had first heard about Lantern City as an upcoming TV show before I had heard of this comic. I keep my ear low to the ground for Steampunk things since my wife is a huge fan of Lady Mechanika. Steampunk is a genre that lends itself to comics and the screen well, but I feel is still pretty fresh territory for story telling despite the massive influx of creators in that sandbox. Picking up the Lantern city comic today I was expecting crazy gadgetry, weapons, and extravagant head-ware, many of the tropes of the setting, but was pleasantly surprised.
What I found was a really tight and interesting Dickensian story of a brutal place named Lantern City. Paul Jenkins and Matthew Daley have created a dark world where food and illness ravage the lower caste, brutally oppressed by the upper class Greys with their red Guards. I really felt like the attention here was on building the characters up, and world-building in a way that made it feel real. The story is illustrated by Carlos Magno and colors by Chris Blythe, whose attention to details make the setting vivid and beautiful, and really jump off the page. You get some amazing architecture in Lantern City, and the design choices for the Guards are very bold. I can’t wait to see where this goes, and am excited about the stories we will see come out of Boom studio‘s new title.