Review: The Wild Storm #1

The Wild Storm #1: Cover by Jon Davis-Hunt

 

In The Wild Storm #1, DC Comics architect and Wildstorm founder Jim Lee tasked veteran writer Warren Ellis to reinvent his beloved superhero universe for today's generation. 

 

From the first page, we know Warren Ellis has adopted a new sensibility. There's no hint of stylized superheroes. Instead, we find people adopting a pragmatic approach to protecting our world against the dangers that threaten it today.

 

It's an approach that's invaded big-budget Hollywood thrillers, and taken over TV police dramas.

It's dark, gritty, and very, very real. 

Still, like any good dramatist, Ellis finds ways to lighten such heavy themes. A little bit.

Along with a twenty-four hour news cycle, threats from criminals, terrorists, and nefarious organizations and governments never cease. Thus, our characters are always alert, always looking for where the enemy will strike next.

 

Even a supposedly off-duty Miles Craven, the director of the deep black government department known as International Operations, is always on the lookout. 

So is his husband Julian, who I expect we'll learn more about in later issues.

Jon Davis-Hunt's previous penciling and inking work impressed Warren Ellis with its "clean line, its modern feeling, his attention to acting and body language as well as his attention to detail and environment." Apparently, when Kieron Gillen showed him Hunt's work, Ellis' first reaction was, "That's my artist."

"And I was right, too," Ellis asserts in the interview in the back of The Wild Storm #1.

In that interview, Ellis said he wanted to look "at the conspiracy-theory landscape of today, so there was a lot of research on, for example, the current state of UFOlogy and the extraterrestrial hypothesis." He puts this to work immediately with an incredible transformation a young woman undergoes in this first of two incredibly detailed pages by Jon Davis-Hunt.

What if you saw a man falling out of a skyscraper? What if a woman standing beside you suddenly transformed into a flying, mechanized being? Wouldn't you wonder, just a little, if this person was really human?

 

On the other hand, rich technologist Jacob Marlowe comes across as all-too-human. You can see just how shaken he is, thanks to Hunt's penciling and inking, and Ivan Plascencia's coloring.

 

In The Wild Storm #1, there are no narration boxes or sound effects. Only two times does color invade a dialogue balloon. Still, letterer Simon Bowland has his work cut out for him with all the characters' interactions. 

If you prefer a wham-bang-boom five-minutes-and-its-over read, this comic definitely isn't for you!

Wildstorm Trade Paperback Volume 1

 

With Jon Davis-Hunt*, and presumably the rest of the creative team, Warren Ellis wrote four books (his words) in twenty-four issues. His first book, or graphic novel, features a stunning cover by Jim Lee and inker Scott Williams. In those first six issues, Ellis reintroduces such storied characters as Jacob Marlowe, Grifter, Voodoo, Zealot, Miles Craven, Michael Cray, and...that woman who turned into a flying mechanized person. I want to know more about all of them, don't you?

Congratulations to Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hunt, and the entire creative team on updating Jim Lee's wildly successful superhero universe for today's sensibilities!

Dragon Dave

*To see Jon Davis-Hunt's latest work, check out Valiant Comics' Shadowman #1, on sale today.

P.G. Wodehouse on American Composers

 

Piccadilly Circus, London, England

 

In the P.G. Wodehouse 1919 novel A Damsel in Distress, American composer George Bevan has traveled to London. He's been helping the director of a musical fine-tune his American show so that it works well for a British audience. One afternoon, he takes a cab in Piccadilly Circus, and a beautiful woman jumps inside. He agrees to hide her from a pursuer, and forces his chest out the window to hide her from view.

Not only is George a gentleman, but also he has fallen head-over-heels in love with her.

After an altercation with her pursuer, they arrive at his hotel. Even though she has not told him her name, he agrees to loan her money for train fare home. When he returns to the lobby, the woman and the taxi are gone. In her place stands her pursuer. The man asserts that it was bad enough that George knocked his expensive hat off in the street. 

Now George refuses to admit he's obviously sheltering her in his hotel room!

The man gets demonstrative. The hotel staff call the police. The man, who it seems is the young woman's brother, strikes a policeman who attempts to calm him. The woman's brother is hauled away to jail. 

The next morning, George pieces together the woman's identity and whereabouts from an article in the newspaper about her brother's arrest. He must see her again. So he forgets about his musical, boards a train, and sets out after her.

 

George rents a cottage near the family castle. Her learns her name is Maud. Eventually her father, an English Lord, who likes him from the outset, learns how rich George is. It would seem that royalties from all the songs George has written, which are performed daily in his musicals, make George a hefty packet. Still, her aunt is holding-out for her niece to marry a titled member of the British nobility.

Whatever will George do?

By the time P.G. Wodehouse wrote A Damsel in Distress, he had already created the characters that would regularly appear in his most famous series, such as Jeeves and Wooster and the Blandings novels. But what's most interesting to me is that this period of his career is defined more by his work on musicals. As an British songwriter, Woehouse found tremendous success writing songs for Broadway shows. Thus, his portrayal of George in A Damsel in Distress seems autobiographical in nature, if from an opposite point of view.

So, while historians suggest that P.G. Wodehouse played an important role in the development of the American musical, readers today regard him mainly as a British humor novelist. Clearly, he was so much more.

Dragon Dave  

Review: Orphan and the Five Beasts #1

 

In Orphan and the Five Beasts #1, Renaissance man James Stokoe introduces us to Mo. She spends her days training, and caring for her aging guardian. She strives to learn all the teachings of her adoptive house, and master its precepts.

One day, the apprentice finds a dying man branded with a strange symbol.

That evening, her master relates the sad history of their house, and how it has affected their land.

He tells her of a cruel aggressor who once terrorized their land. He also mentions the five men who asked him to give them the knowledge of his house, so they could defend their homes and villages.

Despite the way the invader devastated their land, the master refused their request. Unlike Mo, these villagers had not studied to learn such powerful knowledge. Nor had they trained to master the abilities they sought.  

 

Still, the men refused to leave him, and the people suffered. Reluctantly, the master bestowed one aspect of his house upon each man. Each promised that after using his newfound power to turn back the invader, he would return to the master, and devote himself to his teachings. 

Sadly, after safeguarding their homes, none of the five men returned. Over time, the power so easily gained unbalanced and corrupted them. In seeking to defend against a raging monster, they become monsters themselves.

 

 

So Mo is forced to leave her home, redeem her master's failure, and save her land from the depredation caused by the beasts these one-time saviors have become.

In Orphan and the Five Beasts #1, James Stokoe blends intricate artwork with a timeless story. Each panel is filled with expressive and detailed linework. His coloring, at once realistic and psychedelic, is reminiscent of the old days of four-color comics, but with today's graduated tones and shadings. His narrative boxes relate the history of their land, while his dialogue balloons reveal the strength and balance of his characters.

 

James Stokoe makes me yearn to know more of this earlier phase of this land's history. I wonder if Mo's parents were simple peasants who died amid the fighting. Or might she not really be an orphan, and her father one of the land's five would-be saviors?

If James Stokoe doesn't cover Mo's origins in this four-issue series, perhaps he will do so a prequel series someday.

In the remaining issue, I look forward to seeing how Mo erases her master's shame while safeguarding her homeland. I expect lots of martial arts action, along with Stokoe's unique over-the-top humor that makes this serious story more interesting.

With Orphan and the Five Beasts #2 coming out this week, check out this miniseries if you have not already done so. I don't know how Orphan Mo can possibly tackle all five of these superhuman beasts in the three remaining issues, but I look forward to finding out.

Orphan and the Five Beasts #1 is $3.99, and available from Dark Horse Comics.

Dragon Dave

Review: The Bequest #1

 

 

The Bequest #1, by Bloodshot writer Tim Seeley, caught my eye in the comic shop. After flipping through the issue, and seeing the artwork by Freddie E. Williams II, I knew I had to buy it. I'm glad to say that when I got it home, the comic didn't disappoint me.

 

The story introduces us to a band of adventurers in the realm of Tangea. They may be antiheroes, but you can sense the streak of good in them. Although they come from mixed ethnic and racial communities, they might not be welcomed with open arms by any of them. 

 

The backgrounds and characters look real and three-dimensional. Occasionally, the way artist Freddy E. Williams II plays with perspective threw me. But overall, his art really appeals. Rest assured, all the adventurers in The Bequest are (relatively) the same size, and worth getting to know.

 

In addition to our fantasy heroes (or antiheroes), this issue features two dragons. One is shown on the cover, and promises to play a prominent role as the series continues. This less colorful guy, an Elder Serpent, is named Veristine Kole. The way letterer Marshall Dillon colors the Elder Serpent's words red in a black dialogue balloon suggests that the dragon may not be wholly good, let alone overjoyed by his visitors' arrival.  

When Veristine Kole attacks them, the adventurers receive aid from an unexpected source.

 

In addition to soldiers from another realm, you may also notice two characters inked in silhouette. It is they who summoned the soldiers here. As the story unfolds, you will learn that the summoners pose a danger not just to our characters and their realm of Tangea, but to our realm as well.

 

Much to the displeasure of our antiheroes' leader, Warlock Garthodd, one of their party panics. Before the real world soldiers can save them from the dragon, Jerril Fain, a half-elf, summons the aid of the Chamber. This group of godlike beings, colored so beautifully by Jeremy Colwell, rescue them from immediate peril.

Standing in judgment over them, the members of the Chamber decide to conscript them into service. 

 

 

Thus our antiheroes, including sultry night elf Creedux, and a wood sprite named Billi, are transported to the realm called Earth. There, in the city of Chicago, they must pay penance for their crimes in their own world by policing the portals between our world and theirs.

Sound easy? There's one catch: the longer they stay in our realm, the more the magical powers they command will slip away.

At $4.99, The Bequest #1 runs a little more than your standard comic. But it contains twenty-four pages of story on hard, glossy cardstock. For you fantasy gamers out there, Tim Seeley has thoughtfully included five Character Sheets on our new friends. So while you read the series, you can also factor his heroes into your games.

 

I don't know much about publisher Aftershock, but I enjoyed The Bequest #1. With issue #2 coming out today, this would be a good time to check out the series, and decide if you'd like to get onboard. Personally, I'm very intrigued by this fantasy adventure. 

The Bequest reminds me of my own Dungeons & Dragons days, as well as the way author Brian Daley juxtaposed real-life soldiers into a fantasy world in his early novels The Doomfarers of Coramonde and The Starfollowers of Coramonde. It also reminds me a little of Roger Zelazny's Amber novels, and how the late science fiction author also enjoyed role-playing games. 

Well done, Tim Seeley, Freddie E. Williams II, Jeremy Colwell, and Marshall Dillion. You've crafted a very strong debut!

Dragon Dave

Recovered Photos

 

While going through my computer's photo library, I discovered four photos in a Recovered Photos file. They struck me as significant, so I thought I would share them with you.

I drew this first one on a trip to Florida. I had recently attended my first comics convention, and was looking to fill in some holes in my long-neglected collection. While taking time out for must-see attractions, such as Disneyworld and Gatorland, my wife and I also stopped by several comics stores. After this trip, I would reconnect with my friend Justin Ponsor. Through our dialogue, he gave me a greater appreciation for comics.

Sadly, Justin is no longer with us, coloring the comics we love. But at least he shared his love for them with me before he left. I no longer neglect my comics, and my collection is ever-growing. 

This second photo is of two ponies in a road in Dartmoor National Park. I took this during our trip to England in 2015. I did a good number of sketches that trip, including the view of Haytor from the room in our Bed & Breakfast. 

The hill, with its distinctive tor, was only a short walk away from the Moorland Hotel, where Agatha Christie stayed while writing her first published novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. As I sketched, I imagined her hiking up that scenic hill while pondering the scenes she would write the following day.

After checking out of our B&B, we took the short drive to Haytor, and watched all the tourists hiking up that hill. Oh, and taking photos of the ponies. There were oh so many ponies that day at Haytor, far more than the two along the road in this photo.

 

This drawing helped relieve a burden I carried. It helped me fix in my mind, for all time, a place that was hugely special to me. Even if it no longer existed for me (or at least, never could), only after I drew it, could the healing begin.

 

This was a church convention, from the denomination of my youth. I only attended the event because some people asked me to accompany them. The event reminded me why I left that denomination, and why I rarely attend church anymore. 

For whatever reason, my photo library decided to save these four. Together, they encapsulate the past I've left behind, and what I carry into the future. 

Perhaps I'll leave them on my computer awhile longer.

Dragon Dave