Big Max
words: Dan Slott
pencils: James W. Fry
inks: Andrew Pepoy
publication: Mr. Comics
There’s a certain schlock appeal to this book. Call it a post-modern reduction of Late Silver Age age values; heroes of a primal ilk, damsels in sex-tress, and gimmicky villians abound in this latest offering from Dan Slott. I can’t decide if Big Max‘s intended audience are clever 12 year-olds or irony-steeped hipsters. Despite being neither, I found this to be a fun read, the sort of thing with which to cleanse the palate between heavier, darker books – a comic sorbet, if you will.
I couldn’t quite believe it when I opened Big Max, but the reality was there; Ape-as-Superman. Nietchsze would’ve either gone into fits or giggled with delight upon reading Big Max, which should tell you a lot about this book. The title character is a gorilla has flight powers, invincibility, and a little monkey side-kick. His alter-ego is just literally a mask, and his love interest’s a plucky female reporter who dresses like a post-apocalypse Flashdancer. And the big villian is a mime.
Great shlock. Hats off to the Slott and Fry for this one.
Score: If Big Max were a movie, I’d gladly pay for a big popcorn and drink combo.
Samurai Executioner #8
words: Kazuo Koike
art: Goseki Kojima
publication: Dark Horse
Koike and Kojima’s Samurai Executioner is a more cohesive piece than their prior triumph, Lone Wolf & Cub. By the time you put Volume 8 down, there should be a definite sense of a single story being told here. The work as a whole reads as a series of vignettes, rather than episodes, and each one gives you another piece of the complex and shadowed soul of Yamada Asaemon. Like LW&C, these are grim tales of murder, lust, greed, and execution; yet the executioner Asaemon, unlike his assasin counterpart, is constantly striving for struggling for redemption. Where LW&C’s Itto Ogami walked his bloody path of vengeance with nothing but Hell in his sights, Yamada Asaemon dreams of a better tomorrow, with an idealism that’s very characteristic of the creators’ post-war generation.
In Samurai Executioner #8, the smaller tales read as more complete, self-contained stories than in the previous volumes. Koike and Kojima have a very freeform approach to narrative construction in most of SE, but in volume 8, they’ve reigned it in a bit. As a result, volume 8 is a bit easier to read than volume 7 was. As usual, there’s a wide variety of characters that parade before Asaemon’s blade: a pock-faced ronin; an ambitious police chief; a pimp who wishes to recall a single face at the moment of death; and wall painter whose body defies death to clap once after decapitation. Koike and Kojima’s particular genius in SE is to reveal the humanity of this stoic demon in the fragile emotions and motives of those who will lose their heads to his sword. Volume 8 is yet more evidence these two masters of manga stood head and shoulders above their peers from 30 years ago and those who would follow them a generation later.
Score: Are you kidding? Can these two together earn anything less than an artistic orgasm?
Zombie Tales: The Dead #1
words: Giffen, Nelson, Pascoe, and Rogers
art: Tadem, Moder, Moreno, Lim
publication: Boom Studios
I’ve regarded the zombie revival of the past decade with a mixture of elation and reserve. On one hand, you get some wonderful schlock (Shawn of the Dead); on another, you get rather uninspired remakes and rehashings (Dawn of the Dead and Resident Evil 2); and on yet another, you have the revisionists, who can go either way (28 Days Later). It’s gotten so that you really can’t anticipate the goodness of any new zombie outing, like being presented with a variety of tasty-looking pies and being told that at least is made of liverwurst.
Zombie Tales attempts a combination of schlock and revisionism, which yields some interesting results. Without revealing any twists, I can only say that some of them work better than others. The teams of “4 out of 5” and “Zoombies” get big thumbs up from me, tho – the former presents a great explanation for the zombie outbreak, and the latter is a quite different point of view.
Score: If zombie comics were cars, Zombie Tales would be a Nissan Altima – solid work that doesn’t necessarily stand out.
Local #3 – Theories & Defenses
words: Brian Wood
art: Ryan Kelly
publication: Oni Press
Brian Wood is at the forefront of what I hope will be a new movement in American comics – comics as realist literature. Last year’s Demo was a revelation of indie talent, and Wood returns with Local as a logical follow-up. In scripting another series self-contained narratives, it’s as if Wood is following in the footsteps Phillip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates, crafting emotionally relevant short stories full of tension that might not be fully released by the end. Ryan Kelly’s almost neurotic artwork is a perfect complement for the terse prose it illustrates.
Issue 3 follows the members of a broken band as they return to their hometown. One might assume that re-integration following massive success would be somewhat pleasant, but its anything but, as the individual members (and so many people forget that bands are made of individuals) try to make sense of their present and look tentatively at the future. It’s an almost heartbreaking story, told primarily through an interview with the frontman, but there’s a cautiously and tentatively optimistic note at the end.
Score: Brilliant work. Capital work, gentlemen. Hats off to yer mum.
