The first I will write about here is my first ever digital comics purchase, which I bought yesterday on Halloween, entitled Dracula The Unconquered, number one! Written by Chris Sims, with art by Steve Downer and letters by Josh Krach, Dracula is a fun for everyone adventure romp. The first thing you will notice, or at least the first thing I noticed, was that this comic is absolutely gorgeous. Goodness knows how long it took Downer to to draw AND color all of this awesomeness, but he does a stellar job. The action is clear and energetic, the characters are lively and fun, I love the design of Dracula (and the entire cast) but I think one of my favorite things in particular here is how he integrates the sound effects into the panels. Too often have mainstream comics been resorting to digital fonts for their sound effects, plopped all hurly burly over the artwork. In Drac, the sound effects are etched in stone, engulfed in flames, and sliced through the air. It is something only comics do, and it is outstanding. The backgrounds, colors, lettering, everything here in fact, is top notch.
Sims writes a confident and ready-for-anything Dracula, who isn't quite at his peak right now, but will not let momentary weakness stand in his way. The story opens with Dracula emerging from a coffin, a young woman standing over him with a stake, booming "WHO DARES RAISE DRACULA FROM THE DEAD?" An old acquaintance and rival it seems, who seeks to use Dracula as a tool to unite the world of the vampire. Dracula of course will have no part in this, but it seems those that resurrected him will not take 'no' for an answer. But why was Dracula locked away? What lead to his downfall? I really can't wait to find out. For a first issue, this baby moves, too! We have Dracula using spells, swinging chains, and battling giant magic spirits. This is well worth my one dollar payment! Sims, Downer and Krach should be very pleased with this first issue, and I will most definitely be back for issue number two.
Here is a six page preview! http://www.draculatheunconquered.com/news/ The website also has a lot of great process stuff!
The second book for a buck I got was Spaceman, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. I have not read their most famous work, 100 Bullets, but I really enjoyed their mini series Batman: Knight of Vengeance in the Flashpoint crossover event...in fact it was the ONLY Flashpoint tie in book I really liked! Keeping that in mind I decided to try out Spaceman, and there is something very interesting cooking here.
Our hero in Spaceman is an ape-like creature named Orson who was created in a lab to explore Mars, but seems to have never gotten there...or perhaps he was there and is back? Orson is experiencing a nightmare at the opening of the story, on a dangerous mission to fix a breach in the Greenhouse at the base on Mars. He awakens, on Earth, in a seemingly post-apocalyptic landscape. This comic reminds me a bit of the book Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, which also takes place in a less than ideal future where everyone speaks a strange hodgepodge of English. An example from Spaceman:
"This Batch,..I came across some primo CHEM--
tweaked the playlist. Strong like bull, so go eez.
LITTLE tastes, or your HEAD'LL come off"
The whole comic is filled with dialogue like this, and makes for a more attentive read. The plot has some hints of the film Children of Men mixed in, it seems like this is a future that got away from humanity a little bit, and is just trying to catch up with the train-wreck it has become.
I am a big fan of Eduaro Risso's artwork, to me he is a modern day practitioner of Herge's Ligne claire style, with a dash of Frank Quitely, especially in his use of negative space on the page. This is a Vertigo book, and as such is basically the exact opposite of Dracula the Unconquered, which is more of an all ages book. Spaceman features, among other things, weird future phone/skype sex (with diodes and suction cups) drug use, cursing and murder...but that is to be expected with a Vertigo book. I am very interested to see more of the world that Azzarello and Risso are building here.
So there ya have it chumps, two great comics for a dollar each (Spaceman has sales tax in PA though so it is a little more that that) what could be better?!
-Eamon
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