CR Review: Three Comics

Title: Blade: Undead Again
Creators: Marc Guggenheim, Howard Chaykin Edgar Delgado
Publishing Information: Marvel, softcover, 144 pages, May 2007, $14.99
Ordering Numbers: 0785123644 (ISBN), 9780785123644 (ISBN13)

In a sign of either how rapidly I'm hurtling through time towards my own old age and eventual passing or just how quickly things move in the mainstream comic world, Marvel's new Blade series has already turned to dust and been swept off to one side. This new trade collecting its first six issues provides some potential reasons that have nothing to do with the general skill of its execution. The page-in page-out skill displayed was actually quite high. I found this the most handsome of Howard Chaykin's recent comics, the colorist Edgar Delgado kept it dark without obscuring the art like so many of his peers do, and Guggenheim's scripts were lively and frequently funny. (There's a vampire designed to look like the Yellow Kid, of all things.) If there were a huge army of people my age that read comic books casually the way people did in the late 1940s, Blade would be the kind of book they'd go for.

Those people don't exist, and what you're left with is one of those books that will build an audience complete out of current superhero fans looking for exactly what the series offered, and an accrual of fans over time that pick it up in discount bins as the exact appetite for such a series hits them. The strange thing is you can see how a book like this doesn't fit within the story itself. It feels at once more greatly stuffed with plot than its contemporaries but still locked into a presentational style that makes going deep with any of that story nearly impossible. This worked within the gonzo first issue when the shifting effect became part of the overall effect, and not as much in the later ones or in the book when the reader is looking to sink into the comic a bit. There are also those maddening nods to present-day Marvel continuity, which upset only in that Marvel-day continuity 40 years after the idea of a shared universe was exciting proves to be tedious and boring; they intrude on Blade's regular business like a threat hanging over someone at work of being dragged into a deathly dull meeting in the conference room that everyone knows about and no one wants a piece of.

*****

Title: Ballast #1
Creators: Joe Kelly, Ilya, Richard Starkings
Publishing Information: Active Images, comic book with a spine, 48 pages, 2005, $4
Ordering Numbers: 0976676125 (ISBN10)

The first issue of Ballast feels like a little undercooked in the concept department and a bit of a misfire in terms of its execution, which is perhaps why I can't find evidence a second issue has been done as of yet. A truly rotten super-spy type hitman has fallen into a relationship with a god-like being that has pushed him onto a path of doing good, or at least less evil. This allows for exploration in terms of issues like redemption, say or the difference between a beneficial outcome and purity in motivation. It's at this point the book starts to get in its own way. For my taste, and probably no one else's, the use of a really broad and slightly fantastic character and setting cuts into the contrast between the scenes of violence and introspection and perhaps even weakens our interest in the moral questions the protagonist might face by making them out-sized. A more rigidly determined setting would have thrown greater focus on the uniqueness of the arrangement that should be the series' heart.

Kelly presents his story through a series of indeterminate scenes, without anything in the way of explanation either within moment scenes to any great effect, or without them at all. In other words, he constructs his story to present salient points that the reader must discover as they go along, one of comics' classic strengths and a choice that counts on a certain amount of sophistication from the reader. The problem with that approach here is that it extends the story's dramatic moments out past the impact of its revelations; you end up processing the arch approach as a storytelling choice rather than naturally giving yourself over to its way of presenting the narrative. Ilya's art is a solid as Kelly's scripting, and I can't imagine too many artists who would look forward to such massive shifts in style, or at least these specific changes. In general, however, this feels like a sort-of superhero story that was assigned rather than something that grew out of any single passion. In a field so crowded in comics as action-adventure can be, any effort that fails to hit immediately with everything it can is going to have a hard time.

*****


Title: Supernatural: Origins #1
Creators: Peter Johnson, Matthew Dow Smith
Publishing Information: DC/WildStorm, comic book, 32 pages, May 2007, $2.99
Ordering Numbers:

It's weird to me that there are so many TV shows that have some sort of nerdy element to them that a lot of them can blend into the background that I don't even notice they're on. It's not that I'm a devoted watcher of such shows, but I used to be at least aware of what any such offerings were all about. Interestingly, my confusion extends to the comic book itself, which I've just read twice and recall less than 10 percent of the proceedings. My guess is that the TV shows is about the two brothers presented here as kids, and that the series represents their first encounter or near-encounter with a crazy, magical world. I assume that fans have probably seen parts of what takes place on the show, and it is told here with a wider perspective and maybe even all in one place for the first time. It's much more skillfully executed than a lot of crossover comics of its type; the writing is seamless and professional, and the art reminds me of Tommy Lee Edwards -- a very handsome, utilitarian approach to the fantasy/horror blend in which these kinds of projects tend to negotiate. So this was surprisingly okay, but not exactly anything I'd read left to my own devices. If there were a baseline standard for modern American comic books, this one would be pretty near that line.
 
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