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Storming Paradise #1
By Sean Fahey

Writer Chuck Dixon is someone I’d genuinely like to meet. I think sometimes we say to ourselves without thinking, “Man, I’d love to hang out with [INSERT NAME OF WRITER/ACTOR/MUSICIAN HERE]. But Dixon is someone I can actually see kicking back with and talking about Patton, The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and the Time/Life World War II series for a few hours over a case of beer. The guy has a knack, and a real passion, for engaging stories about war and the men who fight them. Generally, most of his war stories have focused on small commando teams fighting in the shadows of a larger conflict. But with Storming Paradise, Dixon takes things to a whole new level, broadening his scope to an alternative history of the Pacific Theater.

Storming Paradise opens with The Manhattan Project ending in disaster, forcing President Truman to order a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland. Dixon very skillfully weaves together about a half dozen individual plot threads in a way that flows naturally, allowing the reader to see a story organically develop from every level and both sides of the conflict. From MacArthur and Patton (and their animosity for each other), to grunts leaving Italy for Japan, to a Hollywood star with a guilty conscious, and from the Japanese high command to the women and children conscripted to help prepare the coastal defenses, the scope of this story is (appropriately) immense, but never loses the intimacy of the individual story lines.  It’s everything you want from a World War II epic.

Artist Butch Guice is a perfect choice for this series. His intricately detailed style, grounded in realism, draws you into the story and lends an air of believability necessary to “sell” alternative history. What’s more, Guice is a talented visual storyteller, and through framing and pacing is able to brilliantly convey both the larger-than-life and personal aspects of this story.

Don’t expect a lot of action in this issue. Dixon is taking his time setting up the story, and establishing the central characters, which is going to be critical to giving the inevitable invasion greater context and deeper meaning. This is great book, and I would love to see more alternative history comics on the stands. There’s room for them, especially ones as well done as Storming Paradise.

FIVE OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds: Indiana Jones Adventures (Volume One)
By Sean Fahey

Generally, I find “all ages” books to be anything but. However, Dark Horse has established a solid reputation for sophisticated, thoroughly entertaining and genuinely “all ages” comics with their Clone Wars Adventures digests, and they further strengthen that reputation with the thrill-a-minute Indiana Jones Adventures. Unlike the anthology style format of the Clone Wars Adventures though, Indiana Jones is a full length story, and a damn good one that follows Jones from Sweden to London to Marrakesh as he tracks down an ancient Nordic scroll thought to contain a formula for making Berserker super-soldiers! Naturally, certain armband wearing fascists with global ambitions have also taken an interest in the scroll, and have hired a certain French tomb raider to get it for them. Indian Jones and Viking artifacts! Peanut butter meet jelly.

This is an exciting read, filled with globe-trotting action and adventure. But it’s worth noting that this isn’t “Indiana Jones Paint-By-Number.” By setting the story in 1930 (earlier in Jones’ career than in the movies), writer Philip Gelatt creates a setting that allows us to see Jones at a different stage in his career - one where he’s more a tomb raiding adrenaline junkie than a renaissance man, a little more committed to “winning” than knowledge. It’s an interesting take on the character.

Artist Ethan Beavers clearly did his homework before beginning work on this. There are several times in this book where he frames Jones in such an iconic way (putting on the hat for the first time, the look of frustration after being bested by a competitor) that you could swear he was taking cues from Spielberg, and you can just hear Williams’ score in the background. Top-to-bottom this is a very good Indian Jones story, recommended reading for anyone that needs to get the taste of Kingdom of the Crystal Paycheck out of their mouth.

FOUR OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Raided: Conan the Cimmerian #0
By Jeb D

“Know, O Prince, that the Chronicles of the warrior named Conan continue to fatten the coffers of Dark Horse Comics. But in latter days, the darkness of complacency fell upon its disciples, and in order to revive their allegiance, Conan the Barbarian was foully slain. Behold, then, the emergence of its successor: Conan the Cimmerian.” Not that I blame Dark Horse, mind you: if the comic-buying audience is more inclined to cough up their hard-earned cash for a book with a #0 or #1 on it than a #51, then why not give it to them? So, there’s now a new Conan title, introduced here with an adaptation of Robert E Howard’s poem (!), “Cimmeria,” interspersed with a typically bloody encounter between Conan and a band of Vanir marauders. Basically, though, this is just a continuation of Dark Horse’s careful managing of the Conan license: writer Tim Truman remains Kurt Busiek’s successor while artist Tomas Giorello continues the Frazetta stylings that have been the book’s trademark. I’m of two minds about the series: on the one hand, as I say, no one can fault Dark Horse’s stewardship of the property, or the care they’ve lavished on it. On the other hand, an ongoing series framed and signposted by stories as familiar as Howard’s Conan tales tends to feel as though it’s marking time as it moves in and out of adaptations of stories that have already been told and re-told (and are still available to be read in their original format): it becomes a kind of closed system, with less room for innovation (not as though that’s a hallmark of most comics anyway). But if you’ve a love for Conan of old, or if Dark Horse is providing your introduction to the character, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s business as usual here; but that’s business of a high order, indeed.

THREE AND A HALF VIKINGS OUT OF FIVE

Trade Winds: Y: The Last Man (“Whys and Wherefores”)
By Adam Prosser

There’s really nothing more to be said about Y: The Last Man. I mean that literally, since this is the final trade collection of what is arguably the most notable non-superhero comic…or maybe comic, period…of the last decade. But I’m going to try to find something to say anyway.

Over the course of 5 years, Yorick Brown and his hangers-on have completely circled the globe, and in the process, they’ve found rays of hope even in this seemingly hopeless, male-free future. (Funny thing about “Y”, it’s probably the most upbeat post-apocalyptic story you’re ever going to read.) They’ve also discovered an explanation for the source of the plague that killed seemingly every other male organism on the planet…but was it the explanation? In an earlier story, the protagonists ran into a traveling theatre troupe who had turned the urban legend of “the last man” into an experimental play; that story contained a number of meta-textual winks, including a reference to a Victorian story about a similar plague, in which the cause was never identified. That seemed like writer Brian K. Vaughn’s hint that he, likewise, was never going to identify exactly what caused the “gendercide”; we did eventually meet a (male) scientist who claimed he was responsible, but his rationale involved some extremely dubious “science”, which even the characters (particularly the ever-skeptical Dr. Alison Mann) didn’t quite buy. So kudos to Vaughn for being willing to introduce such an ambiguous note into an otherwise very mainstream series.

At any rate, the series was never about the plague, per se; it was a personal story about, as Vaughn put it, “The last boy on Earth becoming the last man on Earth.” Some have even complained that this is an unfair, phallocentric slant for the story—the world is taken over by women, and yet the focus is squarely on the sole remaining man’s personal journey. I think that’s a function of the perception of comics in general, though, and isn’t really fair to Y as a standalone comic; after all, it still contains a large array of well-written female characters, almost by definition.

But anyway. In this trade, the story wraps up in a surprisingly low-key way; after a single-issue jaunt through Russia (which, like a couple of other plot threads Vaughn threw out over the course of the last few storylines, feels a bit like an idea that he was planning to expand but decided to skip over to get to the finish line) we end up in Paris, with Yorick’s friends, enemies, and long-lost lover all hoping to be the first to run into him. An unraveling Israeli general still wants to get hold of him, for reasons that seem less and less logical right up until the truth is revealed at the climax, and there’s tension over whether or not any of Yorick’s friends will make contact with him, but mostly the focus is on Yorick’s personal dilemma and his feelings for Beth (the girl he crossed the world to find) and Agent 355 (his bodyguard, with whom he found himself falling in love).

It’s a story with a surprisingly downbeat ending, again, considering how relentlessly entertaining and even joyful the series has been up to now. To be honest, I’m still not completely sure how I feel about it; I’d say Vaughn accomplished what he set out to do quite spectacularly, but the story ends in a strange, vaguely unsatisfying place. Which is a pretty good description of adulthood, at least for some people. The conversation that frames the final issue, between Yorick and…someone else, whose identity I won’t spoil, is one I’ll be going back to repeatedly to suss out Vaughn’s attitude towards getting old. Is he really saying that growing up means internalizing all your mistakes and regrets, or does it mean something else?

Either way, it’s a complicated, emotional, frustrating ending for a complicated, emotional, frustrating series. Whatever Vaughn’s intentions, he’s created one of those rare comics that truly resonates—so strongly, in fact, that it already seems like part of the eternal landscape of comic books. In this context, any flaws I could name with the series as a whole would be practically irrelevant. Y just is, towering over this month’s or year’s forgettable comics, and will be as long as people continue to read the things. Even Yorick couldn’t escape that.

FOUR AND A HALF VIKINGS OUT OF FIVE

Station #1 and High Rollers#1
By Graig Kent

Two new books from Boom Studios hit the stands recently, vastly different in plot, but connected by something other than just a common publisher. Station is written by TV scribe Johanna Stokes and High Rollers is written by author Gary Phillips… both writers’ names you will notice are preceded by qualifiers. Neither is promoted as a native comics writer, which puts into mind various rants across the internet about how writers from other mediums have taken over comics, how comics are having a rough time cultivating new, comics-devoted writing talent. I must agree that it has become commonplace for authors (ex. Brad Meltzer) and TV people (ex. Allan Heinberg) and movie people (ex. John Rogers) to be the few new faces in mainstream comics, what I am deign to forget is that these people are writers, first and foremost, and that as a writer I would hate to be forever pigeonholed in one medium, unable to write in any other venue.

That said, comic books are a unique format, and like every other medium has its own strengths and weaknesses. It’s why taking a story from comics to film, or vice versa requires adaptation, not direct translation, which is why most comic book adaptations of movies (and vice versa) aren’t all that great. As a writer, the mindset for telling a prose story must be different than telling an illustrated story. Same for writing for stage, or screen (large or small). Each has their own challenges and you can’t just take a screenplay and plop it into a comic book and have it work. At the same time, some writers are only strong writing in one medium, they’ve honed their skills to the medium that earns them a living, so it’s easy to see why so many writers fail when they try to move from novels to movies or TV to comics.

Johanna Stokes, noted primarily for her work on TV’s Eureka, also has an respectable amount of comic book work with Boom Studios under her belt as well. Station is her latest, a high-concept murder mystery in close quarters which sounds like an undeniably tempting movie pitch. On the international space station, a spacewalk has gone wrong and a member of the station is lost to the void. When another astronaut discovers evidence indicating that it may not have been an accident, but sabotage - or murder - only someone from the small crew could be to blame. This first issue introduces the cast and snippets of personality and conflict, but moreover introduces the concept.

Station is indeed an engaging story idea, taking a “locked-room” mystery and putting it in a setting where, without a shadow of a doubt, no outside influence could penetrate. Stokes executes the concept reasonably well, although I found the reveal and examination of the “murder weapon” to be handled too cleanly. At times I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was a screenplay turned into a comic book for proof of concept purposes. The dialogue is also at times stilted and doesn’t always flow in proper rhythm with the imagery. Some character moments as well feel like they would work better acted out rather than static on the page.

Stokes is paired with a young artistic talent Leno Carvalho who has some definite skills. His international space station is populated with immense amount of detailing, the reader never feeling removed from the environment, and he fits his figures nicely within the confined space giving it a claustrophobic sensibility, while still allowing for movement. Carvalho’s compositional sense is strong, pages 9 through 11 where the astronaut drifts off into the distance (10-11 is a two-page spread) is stunning and very effective. Carvalho’s rendering is very, shall we say, Brazilian. There’s a sensibility that he brings to shadows, figures and detail, as well as the weight of his line that is shared by other Brazilian talents like Ivan Reis and Mike Deodato Jr. Though his characters lose some consistency in appearance from time to time, overall, the book looks very good.

Over on High Rollers, things don’t fare as well. Gary Phillips introduces us to CQ, a former soldier now working as an enforcer for an LA kingpin. CQ isn’t just a thug, though, and he doesn’t just follow orders. His individuality and penchant for thinking makes him a liability, and his boss seems to be playing angles to get CQ arrested or killed. His life only gets more complicated when his estranged sister re-appears asking for his assistance in getting her husband out of trouble with some bookies he owes money to, and his straight-laced college friend asks to get in on the action.

The story of High Rollers seems forced, primarily because we only see Trey superficially, we’re given little insight into his character. He’s obviously intelligent, even somewhat compassionate, and as an ex-soldier we know he’s capable of a lot, so how did he wind up where he is? Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be something the book wants to answer, but instead asks us to accept. If the book has one thing going for it, it’s that a lot is going on, all of which CQ is involved in. Friends, family, cops, kidnapping and hits… how all these disparate elements come together (or if they actually do) is indeed intriguing.

High Rollers doesn’t feel like prose-turned-comic, but it still feels like Phillips is figuring out comic book scripting, but part of that may be the visuals impacting the story, as the biggest hindrance to the storytelling is the art by Sergio Martin Carrera. Though impeccably clean, it gives the appearance of photo-referenced or photo-manipulated art. The backgrounds are spare to non-existent and the figures are stiff which incorrectly makes the dialogue rigid, each panel seeming like a freeze-frame. There’s no natural movement between panels or pages and the obviousness of the referencing is distracting (one scene actually takes place in the diner from Pulp Fiction).

Neither book is a pinnacle of the form, though each has their enjoyable elements. The writers behind each have solid, entertaining ideas and a story to tell, if not yet the refined sensibilities of comic book authoring to tell them completely clean within.

Station


THREE AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

High Rollers


TWO AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS