Digitally Speaking...#10 "Krampus, 51 Serif St., The Accelerators"

Twas the Night Before Krampus (Lifesize Monster Ghost)
From 2013.  Featuring excellent pacing and narrative structure from writer Ben Avery and artist Tim Baron, Krampus reimagines two Christmas icons locked in annual combat. One of them is St. Nicholas, who here distinguishes himself from Santa Claus legend and becomes a holiday templar.  The other is Krampus, a monster and seasonally variant tradition you may have heard about.

It's not surprising to find out both have worked on Oz-related material in the past (Avery has also adapted George R.R. Martin's Hedge Knight to comics), since there are moments where the spirit of those adventures can be found, especially when Avery's elves show up and look like creations straight out of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's adaptations.

This is a graphic novel, black and white.  It represents a couple of talents that could very easily expand further together, with future collaboration.  It reminds me a little of The Mice Templar.  This is not really a story that asks for sequels, but there is room to explore more of its mythology.

51 Serif St.
From 2013.  Horatiu Radoiu's graphic novel looks plenty moody, a real horror experience in the vein of Ben Templesmith or Dave McKean's work in Arkham Asylum.  The thing is, it's accompanied by block text (which itself is fine) that kind of drones on and on.  The text is first person narration.  That much is fine.  It's the nature of the story it relates that begs for a little logic.  Either our main character never realizes that he's been locked in an asylum or Radoiu perhaps...doesn't know the difference between a rehabilitation center and the kind of institution featured in Shutter Island.  There are a lot of deliberate choices that don't really add up here like that.  Radoiu doesn't have a strong narrative voice, nor an ear for dialogue.  Again, this would all be fine if, say, the narrator is supposed to be unreliable, but I don't think that's the case.  I think Radoiu thought he could get away with taking shortcuts.  With just one small push, this whole thing could be considered a success, a real mood piece and study in psychological terror.  Instead, the reader can see all the seams.  And that's the difference between a success and a misfire.

The Accelerators #1 (Blue Juice)
From 2013.  Crude but fairly entertaining concept comic featuring time travel.  It's the kind of story that just tosses the reader into the middle of it and hopes it makes sense.  It does, at least during the parts where the main character starts traveling with an unwitting passenger and begins explaining things.  The passenger's biggest asset to the story is in noting how pop culture has made high concepts like time traveling easier to understand.  I'd probably argue that the passenger is the character we should have been following all along.  The sequence that begins and ends the issue suggests a different story entirely, which is a little odd.  Maybe it makes perfect sense with the next installment?