I'm going to steal a format for reviewing that a website, www.comicsbulletin.com uses for lots of its reviews. I'm doing that for a few reasons: I want to familiarize myself with a certain logical reviewing format so that in the future I can construst reviews without breaking them up like this, but still keeping that logical review order. A general review should cover a wide range of things. Most of my reviewing interests lie in overviews, or how something feels as a whole. Since I want to write for a living I also want to explore those mediums and methods most exposed to the masses. Enough time now wasted we begin the review.
All right, one more set of notes. I'm not going to give the comic a rating because in my head there I get lots of different things from different media, and different examples of that media. But I'll use the last words as a means of revealing whether or not others should give the story a tray. Maintaining the general overview feel I will talk about the sort of people for whom the book feels appropriate. I added a new category so I remember to look at and think about the cover. As it's the first thing a reader sees it impacts expectations. For a very long time (especially considering how most of my exposure to comic book before I started reading was Image era art, all Lee'd and Liefieded up) I thought the art on a cover would be similar to the art in the book. I still experience shock when a catchy cover represents a completely different style than the content. I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation, but after some exposure to the history of comics books I have overcome the expectation. Anyway, I just want to talk about the cover because it's a part of the book. We'll see how long I'm able to stick to writing consistently this time around. The books I review will overlap with things already on the above-mentioned website because I want to reserve things not not already taken for attempts at being E-published.
Book Title: Black Summer #5
Writer(s): Warren Ellis
Artist(s): Juan Jose Ryp, Mark Sweeney (c)
Publisher: Avatar Press
Cover
Speak of the devil! Here's a comic where the normal cover, as well as a variant wraparound are made by the interior artists. I didn't write the above expecting or knowing this about Black Summer, and I only noticed that trend recently so I'll try to keep track of it in the future.
Both these covers are very dramatic and feature content unrelated to any events in the issue. I react better to the regular cover because Sweeney's dark blue/purple theme is very smooth. We have a gorgeously rendered Zoe Jump. She's definitely got this too perfect look to her that has a notion of hyperbole on second consideration. The area around her eyes appears odd, and I don't know if the wrinkles are on the outside of the goggle or on the inside. I'd reference my older issues but they're lost somewhere from my recent move. They don't ever depict her without the goggles in this issue though, but I'll stop talking about it to avoid making an ass of myself. It's a good cover.
The wraparound cover is pure destruction and for that has huge excitement value. Although having that many people take up what seems like such a small amount of space makes the whole thing feel excessively hyperbolic. Dominic looks as though he's had constipation for weeks. While technically jumping, the content rubs me the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on it. It's certainly not that there's too much gore, but it could be that the gore feels gratuitous. I'll stay neutral on this.
Plot
The four leftover members of The Seven Guns resign themselves to violence. Led to believe the government will attack them without provocation Dominic, Zoe, Kath, and Angel One decide to get restocked. After all, if you want to fight a war you need ammo. They arrive at their destination but a surprise awaits them.
(I decided to go with a much shorter, more vague plot overview since I will put more detail about the specific events in the comments section.)
Comments
Ryp's art and all the character's costumes and posturing are such that they all look super bad-ass all the time, which ultimately makes them look a bit foolish. Aside from that the art is crazy. He uses lots of detail--no skimping on the backgrounds here. In fact this very detail enlightened me to the story's biggest weakness: nothing happens!
I'm a huge Warren Ellis fan and I enjoyed the issue, but it would be irresponsible to claim that much goes on in issue five. The four aforementioned heroes essentially run across town only to find the new "enhanciles" waiting for them. And they fight.
Ellis summarizes everything one might need to know from issues one through four in the first sentence of dialog, "You want to finish what John started--then kill him?" So they all agree to get weapons and find safety before arguing about the situation and decided what to do next. Reasonable. Zoe runs all the team to an old ammo dump, D2, using her gorgeous super speed. Ryp draws this beautifully. The art distracts from Kath's awkward monologue, which serves to humanize her a bit.
The next page is another attempt at humanization. A newscaster tries coming to terms with the fact that “four people did this,” this being mass destruction and piles of dead soldier bodies. Maybe I could see the panels with more seriousness were it not for Ryp's habit of over-detailing things with dots, circles, and squiggles. We then go back in time to flesh out some of Kath's personality, motivations, and her humongous breasts. Here the story develops more depth, but at the same time we get four pages of people standing around talking. Two pages of talking and finally a pretty cool super powered fight. We get pulled out in the middle of the fight to watch two military officers debate the situation, but the general comes off as too “all knowing”. The conversation proves interesting enough and is itself interrupted by a jet that's crashed into the base, marking the very dramatic entrance of John Horus.
Final Words
If like me you read anything Warren Ellis puts out then this series continues to please. It's building up toward something, maybe a bit slowly, but it's certainly good enough to satisfy me. However, having already read issues one to four I knew what to expect. This does not, however, surpass my expectaitons. Ryp's art is great as always, but mostly feels like filler in an issue where a lot is discussed, very little is explained, and about as much happens.
