Raided - Friday the 13th: Abuser and the Abused (Wildstorm)
by Max Patterson

Alright, you got me. I’ve talked before about how hard it is reviewing good comics, especially in an age where even the slightest concession to a title’s merits elicit claims of fan-boyism and general nut-huggery. So for the sake of my sanity (and because the other guys actually read good comics), I like to troll the bottom of the comic barrel, looking for easy pickings. It’s not that I’m lazy; it’s just that I don’t like having to work hard. Thus you can imagine my delight when I saw Friday 13th : Abuser and Abused, sitting all by its lonesome. A one-shot based on a beaten to death franchise, with a creative team I’ve never heard of? SOLD!

If you haven’t yet, go ahead and take a look at the score on the bottom of this review. It’s OK, I’ll wait. Yeah, pretty good right? Well Abuser and Abused is a great bit of horror, and a worthy addition to the Friday 13th canon (and in a series featuring Jason X: Horny Teens in Space, you know that’s high praise indeed).The story is simple, but does a fine job of setting up the action. An abused teenager out for revenge on those who wronged her, crosses paths with everyone’s favorite masked psycho. The inevitable machete mayhem ensues, and (surprise!) some people get dispatched in appropriately gory fashion. While the story may be cliched, the writing is solid. Joshua Fialkov does an superb job giving his characters real personality, no small feat considering the limited space he’s working with. The real treat though is the art, which is reminiscent of classic EC Comics horror titles (or to put it another way, Archie from hell). It’s charmingly retro and gives the story an instant appeal. Andy B. and Darlene Royer do dynamite work, easily worth the $3.50 alone. Hell, it’s so good there’s nothing much else to say. If you’re a Friday 13th fan, or just someone looking for a modern horror tale done in a classic style, grab this book immediately. You can thank me later.


FOUR OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Raided: The Foundation #5 (of 5) (Boom! Studios)
by Graig Kent

The five-issue mini-series is Boom’s stock-in-trade these days and it’s a solid format for getting a tight, self-contained story together which will also fit comfortably in trade paperback form and the page-a-minute standard for Hollywood screenplays. Given the number of Boom titles of late that have been optioned for cinematic treatment, of which this title is one, it’s obviously working well for them. But the format is the only failing for The Foundation in that if it suffers at all it’s in the confinement of having only one storyline to explore the concepts within. Created by Kody Chamberlain and expanded by writer John Rozum, The Foundation is about a covert, non-governmental organization which for generations has strived to interpret secret scrawls of Nostradamus and thus prevent major calamities. The series weaves a highly intriguing tale exploring both the theological and the logical questions of fate versus free will all while threading into a story of betrayal full of high tension and action. This issue closes it out in a surprisingly natural manner, opting for the anti-Hollywood ending and instead staying true to the characters and the pacing. Artist Chee does a great job with both the emotional and action/suspense aspects of the series, his composition always sound. His visuals are shadow-heavy and far from glamorous but that works incredibly well for the series featuring shadowy events and far-from-glamorous characters. Again, my only disappointment is that there isn’t more, as it seems like it should be less a cinematic one-off and more serialized in nature. If you’re an espionage fan and not reading the series in floppy, definitely keep an eye out for the trade which follows closely behind in two months.


FOUR AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS