Up for a good scare? Then this is your week, with three new horror titles hitting the shelves. Along with that, we’ve got some new series by storied franchises and two new series hotly anticipated in the Twitterverse, including the first all female line-up of X-Men!
There’s been major online buzz for the new series The Wake, by Scott Snyder (American Vampire, Batman) and artist Sean Murphy (Punk Rock Jesus) from Vertigo. Its hero is Marine Biologist Lee Archer, whose research with whale song has brought her to the attention of the Department of Homeland Security. Lee has a checkered past, it turns out, and she’s both struggling professionally and has lost permanent custody of her adoring son Parker. When the DHS asks her to analyze an unusual undersea recording she’s convinced this could be her chance to revive her floundering career. It turns out she’s gotten more than she bargained for, when she arrives at the mysterious DHS base to find it’s an undersea drilling platform at the bottom of the arctic ocean, and there’s a creature on board she never expected. The story has a fairly rote structure, taking a troubled hero and dropping them into a haunted house with a collection of fellow victims. Lee is an interesting character, but one with overt similarities to characters like Ellen Ripley of the Aliens franchise aren’t that difficult to miss. I did like that she is an accomplished person, a woman of science with strong convictions, and a mother with a tender side as well. This series also employs a very interesting narrative frame, beginning with a vignette 200 years in the dystopian future where cities are nearly underwater and man and dolphin work side by side technologically, and ending in pre-history, thousands of years in the past with a legendary creature who might be the key behind the entire tale. It’s a compelling read in that sense, for certain, and one to follow in the future.
The chills and bloody spills keep on coming with John Carpenter’s Asylum #1 from newcomers Storm King Productions. This is a bloody tale of a defrocked priest who has become a gun slinging exorcist, teaming up with a pair of detectives to track down a demonically possessed killer. This one has plenty of gore and graphic artistry, but just too much under the hood. The main character, disgraced clergyman Daniel Beckett, isn’t so much a man of God as he is a man of the moment, rushing from the bed of a woman – who he refuses to even speak to – into a dangerous exorcism he seems to have little control over. Detective Jack Duran, meanwhile, has lost his faith in God and is a cop careening out of control. He’s got several citations from his superiors and is cheating on his wife with his female partner, a poorly treated character named Det. Maria Carillo, who seems much more interested in seducing her partner than in solving cases. The women around both men contribute nothing to the story, and the plot doesn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, beyond violent death, which includes the demonic murder of a gratuitously nude woman. This has the overall misogynistic feel of mid-80’s horror films, translated to the comics medium, with little going for it in the way of originality.
There is somewhat better treatment of women happening in Amigo Comics offering The Westwood Witches #1, from El Torres and Abel Garcia, the creative team behind Image Comics’ Drums. The story centers on a group of women straight out of Desperate Housewives, with a much more sinister twist. They are witches, and powerful ones at that, holding their husbands in thrall, having brought at least one of them back from the dead after killing him themselves. The women find particular interest in a newcomer to town, author Jack Kurtsburg. Jack’s bestseller, a trashy romance novel with occult overtones, hits a little too close to home for this coven, and they are quite interested in what he might be writing next. There’s some bloody horror imagery here, but nothing that exploits these women, who seem to be using their feminine sexuality as darkly serious assets here. Indeed, though Jack may be presented as the “hero” here, the story is about these women’s gifts, and they are both powerful and frightening. In fact, this was the only book this week with any real fear in its pages.
Another horror legend swings and misses this time around in Clive Barker’s Next Testament #1 from Boom! Studios. This is a fairly pedestrian thriller about a wealthy man named Julian Demond, whose haunted dreams lead him to uncover a frightening secret and possibly an ancient angry god. His son Tristan – the blandly stereotypical, ungrateful spoiled child who (of course) has issues with his father – suspects foul play when Julian disappears. Neither man is particularly original or interesting. Julian offers up his wife, who’s bland to the point of being vacant, to the new powerful being he has discovered, and Tristan seems to have gotten engaged to his fiancé mostly so he’ll have someone to narrate to. The terrible evil, which refers to itself as Wick, The Father of Colors, is a rainbow hued naked deity who seems driven to force humanity to bend the knee, but is hardly a compelling villain in any sense. It’s more of a blank force of destruction, and not particularly fearsome one at that. This is yet another dull imagining, and not worthy of further reading.
Things don’t heat up much when we turn to some major franchises. Right on the heels of the upcoming Man of Steel film release, DC makes an obvious effort to cash in with Adventures of Superman #1. This anthology contains three tales, some better than others. Indeed, the middle story, Fortress by writer and artist Jeff Lemire, is the best of the three, a heart warming tale of two little boys playing Superman, and arguing over who gets to be the villain and the hero while the actual Superman looks on with a wry smile. Nothing here is particularly offensive nor particularly groundbreaking, just a nice book for younger fans of the biggest superhero of them all.
Dark Horse Comics gets in on the genre tales with King Conan #1, and adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon. This is a protracted tale of how Conan, now king, met one of the two great loves of his life. Sadly and strangely, the woman in question never appears in the book. Conan, however, is his usual gruff self, and I had difficulty caring about the soft spot in his heart. IDW, meanwhile, cashes its latest franchise check with Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters #1, a story set on a ravaged Cybertron where the remnants of the Dinobots struggle to keep the planet’s dwindling population alive. This is another comic for kids, really, with little more than a glorification of the toys that spawned the series.
Which brings us at last to one of the most anticipated comics events of the summer, the launch of X-Men #1 by Brian Wood (The Massive, DMZ) and Olivier Coipel (House of M, Thor). This is the 4th volume of one of Marvel’s biggest mainstream titles, and it finds several of the X-Women in new and dire straits. The tale centers on Jubilee, the Japanese-American former sidekick of Wolverine who hasn’t gotten the most love or respect in the past, from writers or fans alike. She’s on the run with an adopted infant in tow, and trying to get home to the X-Men, the only real family she’s ever known. She’s greeted by former teammates Storm (whose return to the Mohawk look is much appreciated), Kitty Pryde and Rogue, who are shocked and pleased at Jubilee’s foray into motherhood. Meanwhile, telepathic powerhouses Psylocke (fantastically reimagined of late by Marvel) and Rachel Summers tangle at the recently revamped Jean Grey School of Tomorrow with John Sublime. He is a suddenly prolific X-Men villain who had a hand in the creation of both Wolverine and Deadpool, among many others. In fact, he’s a sentient bacteria who has existed since the dawn of life on Earth, and not only is he a nasty bit of business, he has a sister with whom he’s been fighting a war for millennia. Now she’s on the warpath, and Storm’s new team of X-Men are all that stand in her way. This is a pretty great example of a mainstream comic franchise finally treating its female members with utmost respect, and not just by giving them their own book. Each one has a fantastic visual look, abandoning previously overly sexualized appearances in favor of strength, with a dose of femininity. Moreover, they are all growing into roles of leadership, from becoming effective teachers at Wolverine’s rejuvenated school, to being comrades in arms, to venturing into motherhood. The sisterly relationship between Storm and Psylocke, previously well explored in the Uncanny X-Force reboot, is expanded to the full group here, and you get the strong sense that each woman has the other’s back. If you haven’t been reading the X-books since the Marvel NOW! event began this year, now is the time to get on board, for certain.
