Back to Brooklyn (2009)

"It wasn't Saetta, oh no, but it was part of the shitstorm he's stirred up. Part of the fucking walking warzone the son of a bitch just is."

This book collects the five issue series from Image Comics. The story was by Jimmy Palmiotti and Garth Ennis and was written by Garth Ennis with art by Mihailo Vukelic. Hopefully Ennis requires no introduction from me as he is one of my favourite writers and I have written about him and some of his books on this blog. Jimmy Palmiotti is a writer and inker who often collaborates with Justin Gray and had a five year run on Jonah Hex. This series marked the comic book debut of Mihailo Vukelic.

Bob Saetta is a gangster who has turned himself over to the police and federal agents to testify against his crime lord brother, Paul, and bring down his criminal empire. However, Paul is holding Bob's wife and child and so Bob arranges with the lead investigators that he be released long enough so that he can free his family. They agree and so begins a bitter battle waged on the streets of Brooklyn between the brothers.

This is a pretty straight forward hard-boiled crime story from Garth Ennis. Whether it is under the influence of Palmiotti or not, the violence portrayed in the book is grim and brutal but without the underlying black humour that we expect from Ennis' own work. The reason for Bob's turning against his brother seems like a typical Ennis shocker but there are moments of the blackest humour when Bob visits his mother to talk about what Paul has been up to. The art from Vukelic is very nice but somewhat unusual too. The colouring leaves the book looking like a sepia toned document of the past and the colour palette is muted throughout. All in all a good read but I do miss the all out craziness of one of Ennis' own scripts.

The Private Eye #1 (2013)

"Look, once upon a time people stored all their deepest, darkest secrets in something called 'The Cloud', remember? Well one day the cloud burst."

This is a new venture from Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin that is creator owned and only available online at a price that you choose. Vaughan is a writer known for series such as Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina and current hit series Saga. Martin is a Spanish artist who has worked with Vaughan before on Doctor Strange: The Oath and Gotham City Secret Files.

The story is set in a future where people guard every aspect of their private life including their true face from each other. In this society, the Paparazzi are private investigators who are hired to find out the personal details on subjects and the Press seem to act as the regulating force attempting to apprehend these illegal investigators.

The story has an intriguing premise in the current climate of the increasing blurring of private and public personas via social media and cloud services. The first issue, of a projected 10 issue series, rattles along and grips nicely. The art by Martin is very nice and the crowd scenes, with everyone in disguises of one kind or another, remind me of Geof Darrow.

I liked the comic very much and I hope that the creators get enough support for them to finish off the story. It will be interesting to see if this sort of venture can stand up against commercial enterprises such as Comixology Submit. The first issue is available now from the Panel Syndicate web site.

Hit-Girl (2013)

"Okay, if you're going to be a little pussy about it I guess we can start on the baby floor. Jesus, Dave! It's like training the Tiny Titans sometimes."

Kick-Ass is back with a vengeance in this prelude story, to both the movie and the comic Kick-Ass 2, featuring Hit-Girl. The book collects the the five issue series and was created by the usual creative team of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

After the death of her father in the first Kick-Ass series, pint-sized vigilante Mindy McCready finds herself back living with her nervous mother and police detective step-father. This proves to be to be a fly in the ointment for Mindy who , as Hit-Girl, wants to destroy the Genovese family and their associates as revenge for her father. She also takes Kick-Ass under her wing supervising his superhero training but her most difficult task is fitting in as a 12 year old girl at school.

I loved this book. It full of humour taking a long hard look at the actions of comic book superheroes when fighting crime, who Mindy places a lot of emphasis on when training Kick-Ass, but also in a great series of sequences featuring Red Mist as he takes the Batman route and learns Eastern techniques from Himalayan monks and mystics. The ultraviolence is present too as Hit-Girl destroys the Genovese crime empire piece by piece and closer to home as her actions bring the mob to her door threatening her new found family. If you are already a fan of the Kick-Ass series then you will probably be picking this up anyway without any recommendation from me but if you haven't read them and are a fan of Garth Ennis then you should give the books a try - start with Kick-Ass followed by this one and then Kick-Ass 2.

I have to mention that the series cover gallery also features this fabulous variant cover to issue 5 by Bill Sienkiewicz after Sienkiewicz:


Brilliant!

Fairest #8-13 (2012-13)

"I wish they'd let me join them in death. I would have been a great ghost. Maybe I didn't have the right hat."

 

This spin-off series from Fables enters its second major story line, and its first without creator Bill Willingham who remains as a consultant, with South African author Lauren Beukes taking on the writing duties. The art is handled by Inaki Miranda who has previously had some one issue credits on the main Fables title. The covers were all by Adam Hughes.

The focus of this story is Rapunzel and it is set back in 2002 before the start of the escalation of the war with the Adversary and Mister Dark - so we see them in their original residence, have Snow White in power, in all but name, and some old characters that have since passed on such as Boy Blue and Jack who has a fairly prominent role in the story. The story itself sees Rapunzel travel to Japan on the hunt for the children that she believes where stolen from her but instead she runs into an old lover from the Hidden Kingdom, a feudal Japanese Fables homeland where Rapunzel lived for a while after the loss of her children. The actions of the past catch up with her as her lover, now a Yakuza style gang lord, seeks revenge for the role she believes that Rapunzel played in the destruction of the Hidden Kingdom.

 I read the first novel from Lauren Beukes, Moxyland, a while ago and I wasn't terribly impressed. For me there were no sympathetic characters for me to have an emotional connection with and so in the end I didn't really care what happened to anyone in the book. And the same problem affects this story line to a certain degree. In the end the story itself was fine and the broadening of the back story of Rapunzel was good - with enough left unresolved so that it could be revisited in the future - but the emotional connection was not there for me. Part of the problem may have been setting it in the past and so it doesn't connect with much that has happened in the main series but mainly there was no threat as we know the fate of a lot of the main Fables that appeared and so the drama was lessened. The artby Inaki Miranda was clean and cute for the most part but horrific and brutal when it needed to be. It remains to be seen if there is to be any impact of this story on the main series or upcoming story lines in Fairest but at the moment it feels like a throw away, standalone tale with no real weight as it was not written by the series creator.

Nemo: Heart of Ice (2013)

"It's just this coat. It's so big and heavy sometimes."

A spin-off story from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books featuring Janni Dakkar as Captain Nemo. The normal creative team of writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill are in charge again for this short adventure. 

Set in 1925, the story sees Janni and her crew stealing the belongings of Queen Ayesha who is in New York as the guest of Charles Foster Kane. Back in her hideaway, Janni reflects on her life and her need to emulate and exceed the deeds of her father and so decides to travel to Antarctica to retrace her father's steps on a quest that left his companions dead and him near to madness. Meanwhile Kane has hired three scientific adventurers to capture Janni at all costs to seek reparation for the loss and embarrassment felt by his house guest. 

 A more straight-forward story that the dense Century series that was completed last year, this story marks a return to the lighter storytelling of the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. The shortness of the story does not give time for much context within the LOEG universe or a well defined reason for the adventure to the South Pole but it is still entertaining nonetheless. The usual elements are here with numerous figures from film and literature making an appearance as well as hallucinatory sequences and alien civilisations. Perhaps not a joining in point for readers new to the LOEG but a fun ride for those who liked the early books.

Fables: Cubs in Toyland (2013)

"Only silly Dorothys arrive in a magical land and want to go home."

The latest trade collection of the Vertigo series, Fables, takes us to volume 18 collecting issues 114 to 123 - marking 10 years of the series. The usual contributors are present again with writer Bill Willingham and artists Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha. There are two stories in this collection the eight issue title story and a two issue story, The Destiny Game, featuring art from guest artist Gene Ha.

The main story, Cubs in Toyland, follows on from Therese receiving the odd Christmas present of a toy boat in the last volume. The present becomes even odder when it starts to talk to her and whisks her away to a land of toys looking for a queen. But this toyland is a dark place with broken down toys who all hide a dark secret of their own and will do anything and sacrifice anyone to be restored to their former glory.

The second story, The Destiny Game, features a grown up Ambrose, one of Snow and Bigby's cubs, relating a tale of his father and how his fate was decided by an encounter with a woman who can pass the fate of others onto different people.

Another solid entry in the Fables canon. The only problem that I have with the recent collections is that, since the defeat of Mister Dark, the wider story of the general population of Fables has been marginalised to just a handful of pages - both in this book and the previous one. The focus has instead been on Snow, Bigby and their family and while the stories are interesting and entertaining, I miss the wider canvas available when a more diverse mix of Fables are brought into the story. But like I say a minor quibble in an otherwise great series as it heads into its second decade.

The Bufkin tale that had been running through the main story is missing from this volume. Looking at the Vertigo web site pages for the single issues, it looks like #114 was the start of a back up feature that starred Bufkin and his adventures in Oz. These are not reprinted in this volume but I hope that they will be collected together along with the standalone issue #124, which was the end of that storyline, in the next trade collection.