First Impressions: Road Rage #1

Title: Road Rage #1

Writer: Stephen King, Joe Hill
Illustrator: Nelson Daniel
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Pages: 24

WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS.

One of my favorite comic series is Locke & Key written by Joe Hill. He showed me that when it comes to character writing and depicting horror to a sequential art format that he is among the best in the business. Being the son of renowned author Stephen Kings, (Also no stranger to the comic scene) I wouldn’t expect any less. Now if you put these two minds together on a project you’ll have my attention, but if you have them working on a story paying homage to one of the most iconic thriller films of all time, then the fan boy in me comes out at maximum overdrive. No pun intended. Road Rage is a mini series paying tribute to the classic film Duel, which was Stephen Spielberg’s debut project as a director. It will also adapt to another novella called, “Throttle” which I must admit I never heard of but after reading this, am already hunting it down.

            The story focuses on a band of outlaw bikers who call themselves the Tribe. No fair weather riders or, “Wild Hogs” shenanigans here as these guys are the real deal. They’re rough, violent, and have no qualms killing if you piss them off. We meet them riding through the desert, heading to a place called Show Low to seek retribution for a business deal that went sour, putting them 60k in the negative. Throughout the book we see two of the main characters, Vince and Race are constantly bumping heads as to what the appropriate actions are to take on their current situation with no peaceful agreement looking to show.

            Taking a break at a rest stop the gang prepares to head out again when Vince notices an old vintage tanker truck just looming over them in the lot, but thinks nothing of it after it departs and has everyone get back on the road. Miles rack up and before the gang suspects anything suspicious, the mega rig suddenly attacks them by ruthlessly running over members and grinding both flesh and chrome into the asphalt. It is a high speed fight for survival as one by one the casualties add up and without knowing who the driver is or their reasoning for the carnage unfolding, the men have no clear idea on how to deal with their assailant other then to keep moving.

            The artwork in “Road Rage” is amazing as illustrator Nelson Daniel puts just the right amount of details in the right places. The bike designs are all unique and the character designs all have characteristics that make them stand out from each other. Given the fact that we are dealing with an all male cast wearing their insignia colors riding cruiser style bikes, that couldn’t have been an easy feat. The truck design and scale of it at times really brings out the monster in an otherwise normal mundane machine that we see every day. Just take a look at that mechanical beast towering over the three main characters and you’ll see what I mean. The Exaggerated size is perfect way of depicting the terror you got from watching Duel.

            One of my gripes with the art, (although this could be a story fault) is right from the start we are introduced to nine characters which like that truck on the cover can be intimadating to readers at first. Luckily though by the end of this book that number is cut in half as members become chunks of meat on the roads or stains on the truck's grill, leaving us with a more manageable cast. The other complaint is how the truck is drawn jumping through the air. While some pull off the terror element well, some just look odd as if it’s bucking like a bull. I’m sure was the intention but to me, seeing a truck bend like that, depicts it as crashing not chasing. 

            The dialog and overall story is easy to follow apart from the broken English but given that’s how your average biker talks I wouldn’t have it any other way. The narrator’s dialog always confused me on one aspect because throughout this book, we never learn who he/she is telling the story. It reminded me of the older silver age format of story telling which you don’t see too much today. The revenge plot was a solid enough ground to begin on but since everyone is running for their lives by the end of this first issue, we’ll have to wait and see if it remains the main plot device.

            Overall “Road Rage” was a very satisfying first issue of this mini series. It got a lot of story done in this book and has a cliff hanger that leaves me chomping at the bit for more. It’s clear that this father and son collaboration have a lot of passion for this project and I must say it imitates the atmosphere of Duel well. I can’t wait to read the next issue.

Ryan Pierce

Driver for the Dead Review

Title: Driver for the Dead

Arthur: John Heffernan

Artist: Leonardo Manco

Publisher: Radical Books

Binding: Paperback trade

Release Date: September 2011

           

            I’ve always have had a small obsession with the occult and supernatural. The idea of there possibly being creatures existing outside of normal explanation quickly fascinated me at a young age. I’m also quite the history buff as my library and long Netflix que of documentaries would suggest. I always love when a story manages to mix these two elements together. Now go ahead and add a gun totting hero with a bad ass muscle car in the mix and my nerdgasm is complete. “Driver for the Dead” manages to collect all these ingredients and conjures up a simply epic tale of tough undertaker who battles the undead in his supped up 69 GTO hearse dubbed Black Betty. If that last sentence doesn’t make you want to scream, “Fuck yeah” then I don’t know what else to say. Go read another super hero comic because if your interest isn’t already peaked within the context of this paragraph then it’s already a lost cause.

I’ll open this review with a little back story but fear not for spoilers as I’m not giving out any more information then what is really on the back cover. Louisiana is a state filled with culture. The food, the music may hold appeal to the tourists, but the voodoo culture and hoodoo religion holds a big chunk of what makes New Orleans so unique. Our story opens up with an elderly voodoo healer named Mose Freeman, (who’s looks are obviously taken from Morgan Freeman) arriving at house on the rich side of town. Turns out the family living there has a son who has mysteriously fallen ill requiring the, “special” services of Mr. Freeman. He quickly determines that a powerful hoodoo curse was placed on the boy by the family’s now fired maid and prepares to lift the curse from its young host and cast the spell back on its creator. Immediately the boy retaliates spewing out a giant snake-like demon from his mouth, giving Freeman the chance he needed to rescue the young soul, but not before fatally wounding himself in the process. With his last dying breaths the old man requests that the family call a Mr. Alabaster Graves, (modeled after Liam Nesson most likely) who turns out to be a driver for a funeral home. We learn quickly that Graves has if you pardon my ‘Taken’ reference, “a special set of skills” when it comes to the funeral home business and accepts the job just as Freeman’s great granddaughter; Marissa intervenes to tag along despite his protest. Now dragging along a third wheel, Graves and Marissa set out for a 10 hour drive to recover Freeman’s remains all the while unaware that an evil presence is spreading terror throughout New Orleans and closing in on them fast.

The cover for “Driver of the Dead” immediately caught my eye when I discovered this book online. The Dark grayish colors clash well with bright white font used in the title. Graves strikes a pose holding his trusty 50 cal. Sniper rifle in the foreground while the hero car lies in background with the grim reaper. It is from this image that Graves’s resemblance to Liam Nesson is uncanny in my opinion but whether it was intentional or not I don’t know as his facial features do tend to change a little bit throughout the comic.

Open up the book and reader is presented to artwork that can only be described as amazing. Penciled and inked by Leonardo Manco, (John Constantine, Hellblazer series), the level of detail between the characters and their surroundings is breath taking. The colors jump out on the pages and do a supreme job of depicting the many atmospheres throughout the story. Most people can only strive in illustrating figures or machines but Manco shows that he has excellent skills with both. Black Betty while admittedly a silly concept is designed in such a way that screams epicness and surely borrowed some cues from the Mad Max Interceptor with its huge blower and exaggerated exhaust. But don’t think that makes Betty unoriginal. The overall details that went into her are indeed unique and somebody needs to make this machine a reality.

Throughout the story, Graves encounters all kinds of monsters and none of them fail to impress. From vampires and werewolves to witches and rotting reanimated corpses, Manco pulls out all the stops on this incredibly dark comic. Their designs are all memorable as they are intimidating looking and will cause certain images to last in the readers mind for a while

Another particular construction In ‘Driver for the Dead’ is its sequential art style. Unlike most comics that use random sized panels throughout the pages, this title relies heavily on repetitious panoramic or vertical columns to tell the story. This helps give the art a more cinematic feel and also imitates time passing quite well. Mixed with dynamic shots, every page feels fresh and new; never once feeling banal.

The dialog bubble layouts are perfect as they never get in the way of the gorgeous scenes and are easy to understand who’s emitting the lines. Where most stick with just plain white bubbles and black text, we find that even here artistic designs are given to enhance effects. Cold dead vampires speak out of blue bubbles while those possessed by true evil speak out of black bubbles with red text making the dialog even easier to understand who is talking.

‘Driver of the Dead’ is once again a debut publication. This time by John Heffernan and most can only hope that they’re first attempts execute as well as he does here. It’s clear that he too has a thing for history and the hoodoo culture as it shows in his storytelling. Many of the monsters like the Loup Garoux exist in Louisiana’s folklore while Marie Laveau the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans was in fact a real person whose grave illustrated in the book is an actual place visited today by those hoping to have wishes come true or to gain good luck. The book dives deep in southern heritage including the civil war and even more recent known events like the tragedy of Katrina get mentioned here. Louisiana itself is indeed a supporting character here and Heffernan takes great care in showing that. All the main characters are fleshed out nicely, making everyone interesting in their own way. Many of the characters get their pasts brought up in extreme detail and really help show what makes them who they are. Personalities are abundant here and not once did I find a character being annoying and hoping for their scene to end. The dialog feels natural and fits the characters and their timelines. While Graves would speak like you and I, People who have been around for centuries talk with a much more distinctive form of dialog. The story also has a noir feel to it thanks to Grave’s Exposition dialog which I must say fits the atmosphere perfectly.

When it comes to grips with this book only three come to mind. The artwork while always stunning does have issues with continuity. For example the Reader sees early on that Freeman died from a large snake bite impaling right through him only later to have his corpse be shown dressed nicely and without wounds of any kind. There are some other scenes where bodies that should be stiff from rigamortis are shown still flaccid and easy to move around. My second complaint is sometimes characters are performing tasks that would obviously raise questions but don’t. For example, Graves parking his car in the middle of the woods and telling  Marissa to walk to a rest stop two miles away while he simply stretches his legs. If that wouldn’t make you say what in protest I don’t know what will. My third complaint is more of a pet peeve then a real issue. At one point of the story it is mentioned that a character died of broken heart, (cue Darth Vader's infamous NOOOOOO scene). Here we have a story filled with monsters, guns, gore, and American muscle and for a brief moment it all has to stop for death worthy of a cheesy soap opera. All theses are forgivable though as the story still kept me very much intrigued and entertained beyond what I was expecting.

In the end ‘Driver for the Dead’ is a gem of a find considering how it came from a lesser unknown publisher. Heffernan and Manco worked perfectly together and with the writer stating that he already has future stories in mind, I can only hope that these two get working on sequels soon. Graves is a fascinating character who obviously has potential yet to be discovered by the end of this story leaving the reader wanting more in a good way. It should be noted that full nudity does exist in this book but it’s never done in a way that feels like porn and instead exists in the contexts to certain mythos. If you are into the supernatural this is without a doubt a must buy title. The artwork is stunning, the characters are well developed and that GTO hearse is just bitchen. Seriously, somebody get to work on that. When my last ride eventually comes I want it to be in that automobile. So go ahead and get your copy from your local book store. You will not regret it.

Ryan Pierce

Gearhead Review

Title: Gearhead

Arthur: Dennis Hopeless

Artist: Kevin Mellon/Ed Herrera

Publisher: Arcana

Binding: Paperback

Release Date: 2008

I discovered the comic Gearhead on comixology as a free preview and was immediately drawn in. The comic gave off the impression of a Mad Max post apocalyptic style world and centers around Shelby Cooper, the tomboyish protagonist who knows her way around a wrench. We meet Cooper for the first time participating in underground drag races for rent money. She stays calm and cool beside her 1940’s hot rod while her next victim boast about his new all electric Datsun 440Z, (guess Nissan decided to go retro with their marketing), before pulling up beside him at the starting line. Knowing that victory was in the bag, she blows the doors off the newb and in good sportsmanship style, supplies the young lad with a witty t-shirt that announces his shame for all to see. With the money in hand, Coop heads on home stroking her ego about how great she is until her car stalls on the empty highway knocking her down a peg. The preview pretty much ended there leaving me eager to see more. I went ahead and purchased the trade of the four issues where I quickly learned that Gearhead’s story flat out died along with Cooper’s fuel pump.

The Cover of Gearhead is simple showing the protagonist staring at the reader while rocking a tank top along with welding gear and a giant wrench in hand against a white backdrop. Colors are muddy which one could say fits the messy life of someone who works with machines for a living, but to me it just comes off resembling uninspired watercolors.

Inside the book, coloring gets a little bit better with more defined shadowing adding depth to the panels, but the bland colors still plague the world the reader is immersed in. Elements are at times poorly represented with odd color choices as well. There are multiple panels where fire is depicted as green smoke, making the scenes difficult to interpret until the lead character makes it clear of that fact later on.

Character designs span from the extremely dull and forgettable to outright ridiculous. Captain Weather Vain’s all green spandex suit is without a doubt the blandest outfit I’ve seen in comics so far. Red skull, the chief of police looks like a rejected version of Marcus Felix from Gears of War and totes around a large revolver that anyone with the simplest knowledge of firearm mechanics would see there’s no way it would work. Subtle T, the ultimate villain in this story wears an outfit so ridiculous and outlandish that it instantly kills the whole premises of Gearheads fabled society but I’ll get into that later. Cooper is the only character that shows any effort put in. Mostly because she’s drawn in the sexiest positions possible Heck, her chest at times is the main focus on multiple panels. Breasts are nice, but there are better ways of making a female character sexy without making every panel a pin up.

Anatomy and facial issues occur through out the story as well. Arms become too long, heads aren’t connected to necks correctly, and derp faces are everywhere. Most of the time though characters just have a bored, unconcerned look to them, even when they are fighting for their lives. Even when they should be flat out pissed they just show a squinty look of annoyance.

Gearhead was a first time comic project for artist Kevin Mellon and it really shows when he tried to illustrate movement and physics. Characters flying look like they are standing giants, while an action as simple as a slap looks like someone holding their hand out. Cars can be seen jumping over folks for the simple sake of showing action with no ramp object anywhere to be seen and Coop has no problem flying a jet pack with a belly shirt and thong with the exhaust flame right over her back. How the heat alone wouldn’t burn her ass, I don’t know.

The use of the panels and the dialog bubbles do an a overall pretty good job at telling the story as the sequential art is easy to navigate, and bubbles never get in the way and are easy to understand who is saying them; with the exception of one splash page where readers witness Cooper being captured by Weather Vain. Unconscious, and flung over the shoulder of her enemy, this would normally be a tense scene except in the very next panel, we see Cooper and her friends driving away in her vehicle acknowledging their escape. Even in a flash back we see Weather vain beating up Coops friends with her nowhere in sight. Why didn’t Weather Vain fly off after grabbing her? Better yet did he ever have her? Did he put her down? The reader doesn’t see Cooper till a few panels later where she is awake and rescuing her friends. Furthermore, since the flashback was all from her memory its safe to say that she was always awake making that splash page completely meaningless.

Despite my problems with the art portion of this comic it’s the story that really kills this book. Gearhead was also a debut project for writer Dennis Hopeless and boy was this a rough start. After the opening race, Cooper is in her garage and calls her brother, owner of an auto parts store, to get a new fuel pump. Living outside the city in the barren apocalyptic wastelands, she goes to meet her brother where we learn an interesting bit about life in the city. Strict laws are apparently in effect inside city limits. Smoking, drinking, porn, profanity, and combustion engine vehicles have all been outlawed within jurisdiction limits leaving everywhere else outside the fifteen great cities a sin filled utopia in a matter of speaking. She arrives at her brother’s store only to discover that he is gone and left a message for her to check the safe. From there, she discovers an mp3 player and plays it to hear their deceased fathers favorite song and begins to cry, trying to make the reader feel sorry for a character they saw. The song then turns to her brother’s voice telling here that her father was in fact a fighter in the super war and that bad things are coming for them. This is where the story takes a complete U turn. The story started out as a road warrior’s tale and quickly turns into a Watchmen type scenario. Turns out the apocalypse was the result of an all out war between super heroes and villains leaving most of the United States in shambles. The moment is interrupted when two suits walk up to the shop and attempt to set it a blaze using super powers with Coop still inside but fail as she escaped.

Realizing that he brother was captured, she goes out in search for info on her father’s killer and stumbles across a small bar named Bar of the Dead. Inside, a band of ex-super villains sit and watch TV as zombies walk around the joint doing chores. Why are zombies doing chores and tending bar you ask? Well much later in the story it is finally explained that one of the ex-villains, Teddy, can generate multiple flesh and blood zombie clones out of his body. He doesn’t possess souls; he’s not a necromancer, he just really emo and lets his, “dead inside” feelings take shape in the real world. Sound silly you say? How about another character that can shoot waves of oil out of his hands? Why Exxon never made the man a billionaire is beyond me.

Taking out the working zombies, Cooper never questions why the dead are walking, and barges into the tavern where she is quickly apprehended by the occupants. She learns that  her captives knew her father and decides to listen to their tale while randomly wearing only a t-shirt and panties despite uttering moments earlier that she would never get naked due to the horniness of one of the occupants. It is revealed that even though her father fought for good, he was eventually murdered by Subtle T and her crew of ex superheroes. Subtle T is now the president of the United States and apparently destroyed all dress codes as she works in an outfit shaped like the letter “T” covering only her naughty bits. That’s my biggest gripe with this character. How you going to outlaw porn and swearing when your outfit screams sex and would cause every straight male to emote, “god damn” within sight? I understand the outfit was to reflect irony with her name but it’s impossible for me to believe that a society this fixed on morals would allow their leader to walk around like that. It’s also impossible for me to believe that her second in command walks everywhere with giant headphones over his ears at all times. Not like he has anything important to hear being in the white house and all.

So later on the group of bandits let Cooper go and find themselves under attack from Red Skull and Captain Weather Vain after Subtle T learns of Cooper’s existence and orders her out of the picture. Some of the bandits get killed, causing the survivors to make a stand and attack Subtle T’s minions head on. Arriving at the police station, Teddy generates an army of zombies and equips them with guns they acquired along the way. Shortly after wiping the police force out, Oil Slick forces Red Skull out and begins to beat him senseless while Cooper tries to pry him off. The struggle continues as Coop tries to save Oil Slick from committing murder, until he finally lets up. Red Skull, now defenseless and beaten so bad that he can’t move or form words, Cooper then takes her giant wrench and in one clean swoop, smashes his face in, making that whole  struggle to save his life absolutely pointless. It is from there the book raps up with Subtle T showing her goods to the world as she gazes out of the windows of the White House with a mildly annoyed expression asking simply, “what’s next”.

In the end Gearhead is one mess of a comic with an identity crisis. It starts out as a post apocalyptic road warrior’s tale that jumps ship to become some half assed superhero drama. The characters and art are way too dull, and the story has way too many hiccups and contradictions to keep readers entertained. It also shoehorns in the popular zombie element and instead shows that zombies being used as a super power just don’t work in this kind of story.  I went into this book expecting to discover a unique bad ass female protagonist who wasn’t afraid to do a man’s job and instead got an uninteresting character that had no business going beyond the pin up posters she was created from. The creators of this crapfest have gone on to making other comics such as X-Men: season one, (Hopeless) and Hack/Slash, (Mellon) so one can hope that their skills greatly improved over the years. With that said though, avoid this lemon at all costs.

Ryan Pierce

BB Wolf and the Three LPs

Title: BB Wolf and the Three LPs

Arthur: JD Arnold

Artist: Richard Koslowski

Publisher: Top Shelf Productions

Binding: Hard cover

Release Date: July 2010

          

We all know the story of the three little pigs. Cute little porkers going about their lives when the big bad wolf appears to tear down their houses and gobble them up. The classic story of brains triumphing over brawns when the wolf is defeated by the infamous brick house. It is always told as a clean open shut case, but did anyone ever ask what the wolf’s side of the story was? What made him want to devour the three little pigs? Were his actions justified? Were the pigs truly innocent? Taking the classic tale and cleverly reimagining it, BB Wolf tells the story from the predator’s perspective and proves that what we are told is not always the full gospel truth.

At first glance, the hard cover design has a simple and humble look to it. Given a faux textured look of library books of older years, we get a small sepia tone photo of our hero in the center. From here the reader can see that staying true to the classic fairy tale, the use of funny animals are going to be depicted and the guitar along with clothing style suggests this will be a period piece centered around the blues era. Open the book and one quickly sees that this will be the case.

The artwork is done in a black and white charcoal sketch style on thick heavy pages. Richard Koslowski’s (Three Fingers), character designs are fitting for a typical fairy tale as his facial expressions along with distorted anatomies do a great job of portraying various personalities throughout the story. Even the designs of the characters eyes are enough at times to let readers know what the character is thinking or feeling at points. The clothing style and the environments do a superb job at throwing the reader into the early 1900s. Wolves are second class citizens, thus their wardrobes are withered and worn compared to tailored garments of the wealthier pigs.  Atmospheres are rich in detail from smokey bars to cold damp nights on city streets. With that said, this is not a bed time story one will be reading to the little ones as violence is illustrated here in graphic detail. Rib cages are burst open, disemboweling will occur, and horror filled faces of death appear throughout the story.

For the most part, the dialog is placed well through out the panels, but there are one or two instances where the locations are off, causing characters to utter phrases not meant for them. Exposition dialog is easy to follow though and sound effects are always used properly to bring more action to scenes. The sequential art also is easy to follow and does it’s job of guiding the eyes from panel to panel.

As mentioned before the story of our hero Barnabus Benjamin Wolf is not meant for real young kids. It deals with issues like the infamous Jim Crow laws that flourished in the south and talks about what one must do to seek justice when state laws won’t help you. Like the comic Blacksad, this is a world where the color of ones fur and species depicts race. Wolves are the second rate black citizens where the pigs represent the more superior white race. BB Wolf is a poor farmer in Mississippi. He’s not a soul longing for riches beyond his wildest dreams. In fact he's pretty content with his humble life. He has himself a loving wife, some pups, and his prized guitar named Molly that he uses to play the blues at his local bar. One morning suffering a hangover, he awakes to the sound of his screaming wife and learns that his farm is being legally stolen from under him by Little Pig due to a loophole in the mortgage. Turns out Little Pig is snatching up land all over the state and in a powerful turn of events all the local wolves get together and make a stand to protect BB and his family’s house. All is well for a while until one night while away, our hero returns to find his house burned to the ground, his neighbors killed, and even his family murdered.

Unlike the classic tale, in here we learn that it is only BB who looses his house shedding more evidence that despite of popular belief not all we hear is true. Knowing for sure that Little Pig is responsible, BB goes on Murdering rampage only to go into hiding afterwards and learn that LP had two older brothers also responsible for the crimes done to him. The rest of the story can be figured out. BB continues his quest for vengeance and along the way meets a handful of interesting characters good and bad. Even in this dark tale humor can be found but it never gets silly and remains at an adult level.

Overall BB “Wolf and the Three LPs” brings a fresh outlook on an otherwise stale fairytale. The characters are rich with personality, the time setting is unique, and it deals with real adult issues shedding light on one of humanity’s darkest shames. I honestly found myself disappointed that story ended as quickly as it did though. Being only ninety pages long I feel that this could’ve been a much longer story maybe even a series possible. This was JD Arnold’s first graphic novel to my understanding and the fact that this tale immersed me as it did says a lot about his story telling skills. I can only hope that he has more ideas to come. With that said, is BB Wolf a must buy? In my opinion, yes because it was quite the experience seeing this old story get retold and grow on a more intellectual level. Plus when the book is only eleven bucks right now on amazon.com it truly is a bargin to add this to your collection.

Ryan Pierce