Anna Mercury TPB

Warren Ellis has accomplished the impossible. He always succeeds in his world-building and high concepts. Anna Mercury has both with a strange world where magnetism is the main source of technology and the world is a flat shelf of crust and water. It’s not an alternate universe, Ellis has too many neat ties to Earth for that to be the case.

But we know Ellis can do that. Where my disconnect usually hits is the characters. I usually love the high concept, but can’t stand the smart-asses that typically populate Ellis’ worlds. Anna Mercury is different. She’s fun, dedicated, and actually pretty normal at her core. She’s a modern Batman in dominatrix leather. It’s really neat seeing her transformation into her “real” self when Ellis starts giving us those glimpses.

The weakest aspect of this collection is the lack of a real antagonist. It’s hard to have a whole nation as an inspiring villain, and while I can respect Mercury’s goals, her obstacles are never really more than targets for her to blow apart with her massive pistols. I suppose a lot of the drama and tension build from the technological barriers Mercury has to overcome, but again, there is no substitute for a villain.

Facundo Percio’s art is interesting, but his faces tend to be a bit lumpy. I also noticed he skimped on the details of bystanders and soldiers, making those generic targets seem even less like actual obstacles for Mercury. I do like the alternate covers in the collection that show other artists’ takes on the visually unique Mercury.

Are there more stories featuring this character? I’m certainly up for reading more.

Fair

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks TPB

I've been waiting for this from my local library for months, so when I picked it up on Saturday, I read it immediately. And I won't say I was disappointed, it was exactly what I expected, but man, this is a fast read.

I don't think Max Brooks planned this as a graphic novel. He basically lays out 2 or three paragraph long situations, usually with very little dialogue or script. He sets the location and players, then describes how the situation was impacted by the undead. Again, exactly what you'd expect, but since each story runs about 8 pages or so, there isn't much time to get connected to any of the characters. In fact, I would be hard pressed to say they even are characters, everyone is either a zombie or zombie-food. It's fun reading about the zombies, but with no emotional connection the stories tend to get a bit repetitive.

Ibraim Roberson's art handles the gore and decay nicely. The humans involved often look heroic and cool too, even sporting minor bites and tears. There are always decent details for the discerning zombie fan to foreshadow characters' fates.

Fair

Black Summer TPB

I'm not the biggest Warren Ellis fan because his work often feels so mean-spirited. That is certainly the case here, his Seven Guns team is a group of hyper-active liberals out to redefine America, so you can kind of predict how they react to the Bush Administration. The book opens with John Horus, the most powerful Gun, killing Bush and much of his cabinet. The rest of the book is the fallout as the other surviving Guns fight off their creator, each other, and the US Army. And by fight off, I mean slaughter. These people absolutely demolish the US Armed forces. Innocent bystanders mean nothing until the closing pages. All levels of civil servants are torn limb from limb. This is clearly an Avatar title, because this story could have come across without all the gory deaths and anatomically correct chests on the ladies.

There are some nice ideas here, Ellis' pseudo-science sounds as strong as it always does. But man, I was put off by the over the top nature of the book. Avatar is an interesting publisher, giving well-known creators a place to write X-rated comics that could probably have been told with an R-rating. Ellis' team has a nice feel to it, the characters sound like they do care about each other even as they complain about everything they do. But these are not heroes. I'd recommend this to folks who love Ellis' super-science and ultra-violence. Fans of normal super-heroes need not appy.

The gore is rendered in bloody detail by Juan Jose Ryp. He's got the Avatar house style down pat. There are arms and legs decorating the background of about half the panels. Every lady is excited, judging by their chests.

I'm glad I just checked this one out from the library!

Average

Crossed #7

Yeesh. Garth Ennis' post-apocalyptic book rolls on, and while it is as upsetting as always, this is actually a little less perverted than it has been.

The whittled-down group has weathered the winter and crossed a desert in search of finding a sanctuary from the Crossed maniacs. The problem is, the last group of Crossed that swore to chase them has tracked them across the desert and is still on their trail. The mindless maniacs are showing even more cunning. Even worse, now they seem to be holding grudges. I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what happened last issue, since I think it has been awhile, but I do recognize the two leaders of the gang of Crossed. They eventually catch our survivors as they attempt to cross a river, and the Crossed open fire on the group, splitting them up. Most of the group meets back up, except for the young boy of the party. When they get to him, he's been infected and after spouting some profanity, he's put out of his misery by his mother. She doesn't pause at all, just shoots her kid in the head. It would be an awful choice, but Ennis deftly avoids the horror-movie cliche that a parent can't do what is necessary to free their kid. It's an awful scene, made worse in that the mother is cold about it. It is the rest of the party that is in shock and upset.

Jacen Burrows is a good storyteller in addition to having a penchant for gore. Burrows is able to focus on just gore here. I'm not sure that the core scene of the book needed as much focus though. I think showing the kid's head blowing apart is a little much, and the message might have been just as clear cutting that out. But heck, I don't think people reading Crossed are trying to avoid brain splatter.

Good

Absolution #1

Christos Gage has a neat idea for this Avatar limited series. Fed up with criminals committing horrific acts then walking away, police-sanctioned hero John Dusk starts taking matters into his own hands and killing criminals. What I really enjoyed about Dusk's descent into vigilantism was how incremental the steps of his fall are. He actually tries to save the first villain, White Power, until he sees what WP had done, then he lets WP bleed out. Later, after facing off against a wife-killer, it almost seemed like Dusk's blade-like forcefield slashed the husband's throat without Dusk meaning to. He seemed almost surprised to see the murderer fall down dead.

There are a lot of graphic scenes that didn't need to be so gross, but heck, this is an Avatar book. Many of the "adult" scenes could have been hinted at or suggested in shadows or with other normal comic tricks. The worst example of grossing up the material was at Dusk's teammate Alpha's family picnic, where she talks about what her husband loves to do to her in bed. Unnecessary. In fact, the only time I thought the "adult" nature of the title benefited the story was when Dusk was in bed with his girlfriend as he's suffering from flashbacks from his police case. That was an upsetting, moving scene.

Roberto Viacava's art is neat. He has that Avatar style down, with the thin pencil lines and hyper-detailed gore, but his super-heroes look decent too. They look like supers plopped into the Avatar world. So he's perfect for the project, basically. I will definitely be picking this up in TPB.

Good