After Twilight #1 (Nu-Classic)
From 2011. This is, in case you were wondering, not at all related to the Stephenie Meyer vampire books. Instead, it seems to be a liberal fever dream about a Texas religious revolt that turns the state into a despotic land with Christians being very, very bad. Basically a bunch of ridiculous propaganda, about as "good" as Garth Ennis's similar anti-superhero comic The Boys (I'm in no way validating either one, nor placing one at the level of the other; while Ennis has considerable support among fans as an established creator who for some reason continually writes about why he can't understand superheroes, no one in After Twilight is ever going to reach that status). The art is terrible. You know it's an indy book because of the art. The storytelling is disjointed, completely inelegant. A hot mess.
Afterlife Inc. Vol. 1: Dying to Tell - Tales of the Afterlife (Jon Lock)
From 2012. This is a graphic novel from writer Jon Lock featuring across-the-board excellent art (from Jack Tempest, Del Borovic, Will Tempest, Roy Huteson Stewart, Ash Jackson, and Gerry Gaylord). It's Lock's vision of, well, the afterlife. It's a collection of shorts.
There's a ton of comic book associations I can make with this one. It's kind of like Dean Motter's Mister X. It's kind of like Fables, if it was an anthology. It's kind of like Atomic Robo, if Atomic Robo were an ambitious businessman in the afterlife who kind of randomly appears in a series of stories and has a tie with a life of its own like Dilbert, who has become Pointy Haired Boss. Or Catbert.
That's also what's kind of wrong with the whole project. It's brilliant, to a very limited extent. One has the sense that if any one of these stories had been focused on a little more, Lock could have still done the rest of them, and they would have had much greater impact for it. But the main character just becomes random. His name is Jack Fortune. It's the kind of project where the creator, in this instance Lock, makes his premise clear well outside of the stories themselves, and then thinks he can do whatever he wants in the stories. Except he really can't.
It's not incompetent stuff, but it comes off that way. It's incredibly professional. Actually, it's like a demo reel for all involved. The artists come off the best. Lock, because he spent so little time making the stories as interesting as they are so close to being, would have come out best of all. But Jack Fortune is nothing more than a vaguely menacing cipher. Like After Twilight, and this is the only way these two comics are similar, Afterlife Inc. kind of flings the whole idea of religion under the bus. It's just assumed that whatever Lock came up with stands on its own. Except it doesn't. Like just flinging Superman out there. Plenty of superheroes have tried to do that. Marvel's Sentry is one of the more spectacular recent failures in that regard. Or all the wannabe Batmans. The whole reason Marvel's boom happened fifty years ago was because it spent so much time developing a whole line of ripoffs. (Don't tell them I said so!)
Read this. But kind of expect better from any of the involved parties in the future. Although technically, this is a pretty solid start. If it had been released by a reasonably established indy company, it might even already have become a cult phenomenon of some kind. Except it hasn't. So maybe either refine or rethink for next time.
Allwenn: Soul & Sword
From 2012. First, the only negative thing I have to say in relation to this one: I really wish comiXology listed page count for its titles. This one's over four hundred pages long. I had no idea.
But it's worth it. It's big and epic and intimate and intricate. It's the difference between overwrought and ambitious. It's just about the best kind of fantasy there is.
And yeah, it kind of reminds me of Grant Morrison.
Specifically, Morrison's 18 Days graphic novel, which was supposed to be a preview of a movie, much like the later Dinosaurs vs. Aliens.
This one's from the mind of Jesus Vilches, who has been working on the mythology since 1988. He eventually found a perfect collaborator in artist Javier Charro. Apparently they've developed a tight bond. With results like this, they really deserve that kind of relationship.
Allwenn is the hero, whose doomed love of Ariel leads him on a rampage of bloody revenge. You've read it before. You've never read it like this.
Vilches clearly knows his material backward and forward. He unfolds his tale deliberately. There are very few actual plot points the story hits, but rather visits and revisits and intensify. You have the sense that he could very easily tell this whole thing over again, and better still.
And that is not a complaint.
It's a prose story with illustrations from Charro, evocative of the two other elements in the title, frames that are limited and repetitious, and all the more striking for it, reframed for greater emphasis.
This is exactly the sort of thing you hope to find when you're kind of wading through random material. It's a true diamond in the rough. And it will probably be one of the best things I read all year. And it's only March.
Are you going to review all 100 of those in that bundle?
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