Writing a licensed comic book seems to be a peculiar sort of balancing act. It seems like there would be two obvious ways to approach the book; either assume that all your readers are familiar with the source material and just hit the ground running, or assume that none of your readers are familiar with the source material and spell everything out for them. Instead, a lot of these comics go for a strange sort of third option, trying to play to both crowds. In the case of Wild Cards: The Hard Call #1, all it seems to really create is a feeling of frustration.

In 1946, Earth was used as a massive petri dish for an alien virus, the Takisans testing their new biological weapon on humanity. The vast majority of those exposed to the "wild card virus" died instantly in horrific, terrifying mutations ("Black Queens"). Most of the survivors became "Jokers"—misshapen mutants that continued to live, unlike their unlucky compatriots. A rare few, though, not only kept their normal forms but gained super-powers, the lucky "Aces" in the deck. Now, in the present day, someone’s stolen a batch of an experimental cure for the virus in New York, while in Colorado someone has exposed an entire high school to a pocket of the wild card virus. And when your only hope to find the answer is the paranoid, increasingly-erratic Ace known as the Sleeper, well, things aren’t looking very good.

I read the original Wild Cards books for years, although I must admit that I fell away from the series during the long publishing gap in the late ’90s. (Some of the more recent releases are sitting on my bookshelf, waiting patiently for me to finally read them.) When Wild Cards was still published regularly, though, I was always caught up with the series, able to recall all sorts of details and characters from over the years. I suspect that’s true for a lot of Wild Cards fans. So it’s with that in mind that I found Wild Cards: The Hard Call a little mystifying in places. Daniel Abraham can’t seem to figure out who he’s aiming the series towards and the end result is a bit of a mess. We get a huge dump of exposition about Roger Zelazny’s character Croyd Crenson (aka the Sleeper) that gives half of the information about the character (that Croyd regularly changes bodies and eats a lot when he wakes up) but bizarrely leaves out some of the most important part (the reason why he’s desperate to stay awake is that the change automatically happens when he falls asleep). So the end result is that people who already know who the character is get a little irritated that they have to sit through information they already know being spoon-fed to them, while brand-new readers are missing half of the information.

Even stranger is an early scene at a science fair, where a young girl is explaining to people who pass by all about Wild Card Day and how the virus hit the planet—it’s once again a big exposition dump, which seems fair enough. The thing is, a major plot point in Wild Cards: The Hard Call is that a batch of the "trump virus" was stolen; at no point in the first issue, though, does anyone ever actually say what trump virus does. You’d think a line about "an experimental cure that restores a small percentage to normal" inserted into her information would have been easy to add in, but instead I had to actually head to a search engine to jog my memory of what this plot point was (which so far as I can remember, was last really featured in books back in the 1980s).

As for the story itself, it’s all right. With only 22 actual pages of story, Abraham seems to split his focus a little too much for a first issue. Jumping from one location and character to the next works well in a novel, or short story with a high word limit, or even a graphic novel where you’ve got the entire story all together in one chunk. As a single issue, though, it makes you feel like you aren’t seeing that much actually happen. The basic idea of a batch of virus being used as an agent of death against a school is a solid one, and presumably the theft of the trump virus has something to do with the story as well. Hopefully the next issue will focus just on the pieces already in play and resist the urge to add in additional ones.

Eric Battle’s art actually bothered me a little bit, and I think it’s because a Wild Cards comic needs someone with a cleaner art style. Battle is perfect when it comes to drawing the Jokers and Black Queens; the scene in the high school where the students are all drawing the Black Queen and mutating to their death is pitch-perfect, each person looking more twisted and horrific than the previous one. The problem is, Battle isn’t as adept with people that are supposed to look normal. When Alex is running with his brother, it’s actually a little hard to tell at a glance if Alex has mutated as well or not (he hasn’t) because his proportions aren’t quite right. Even worse, early on Croyd talks about how he’s got a good handsome body this time around, but the scene in the diner with him asking a redneck trucker (spouting exposition) shows Croyd’s new face to be distinctly unattractive and actually a little creepy because it just doesn’t seem normal (even though it’s supposed to be), a combination of puffy and greasy that is most not-attractive indeed. If this is supposed to be an attractive person, well, maybe that explains why Battle is so good at drawing those that aren’t supposed to be good looking.

I really wanted to like—make that love—a new Wild Cards comic mini-series. After the slightly disappointing attempt from Epic Comics so many years ago (where the only thing that really stood out was Butch Guice’s covers), and from a company known for their good tie-in comics, I was expecting fireworks. What we got, though, was more of a fizzle. Hopefully things will turn around in the issues to come, but right now this seems like a lot of halfway-theres with nothing actually succeeding.

There are times when the back cover copy to a book can actually be a turn-off. Let’s take Veronique Tanaka’s debut graphic novel Metronome, which states, "Just when you thought that nobody could create something new in the comic medium, here comes Metronome [...] a ’silent’ erotically-charged visual poem, an experimental non-linear story using a palette of iconic ligne clair images. Symbolism, visual puns and trompe l’oeil conspire in a visual mantra that could be described as ‘existential manga’…" Now maybe I’m in the minority here, but this sounds so snooty that my first reaction was to not want to read it. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the introduction by Jeff Smith mentioned on the front cover, I might have passed it by. But you know something, I’m glad I took the time to read it—despite the best efforts of the copy writers.

A man is sitting alone in his apartment, as a metronome ticks relentlessly in the background. As he stares into space, though, you start to see the memories unfolding inside his head and discover why the objects in the room mean so much to him. They’re all connected to the girlfriend that left him, and it’s that doomed relationship that is internally playing out for him, once more…

Tanaka’s graphic novel is composed entirely of 4×4 grids of panels, all uniform in length. When you see its first page being nothing but panels of a metronome ticking away, it’s an easy reaction to roll your eyes a bit. Once I actually started reading it, though, I began to see what she’s doing with her writing, here. She’s setting the beat, letting you see the metronome relentlessly tick back and forth until you have the rhythm firmly in your head. As the pages unfold, the metronome starts getting replaced with other items, but still with that methodical beat driving the page. Slow zoom-outs on specific objects for four beats, slowly revealing what and where they are, each establishing a bit more of the scene. By the time our nameless man appears, you not only have a strong idea of where he is, but also firmly have a "1, 2, 3, 4" count moving through your head.

The story itself is interesting in that Tanaka’s able to play a bit with our preconceptions of what happened to make this man so miserable. As his girlfriend appears in his life, things that are slowly revealed may cast a different light, and you begin to learn what really broke them up. It’s hard initially to tell what sort of expression is on his face—is he angry? sad? regretful? seething?—and I appreciate that because of the wordless nature of the book you can make a strong point for any of those being his final reaction on the matter. On the other hand, while Tanaka’s use of the male character’s face is a bit subtle, the same can’t be said for some other parts of Metronome. The reasons for the actual break-up seem remarkably clichéd and makes out the other half of the party to seem almost a bit saintly, to the point that it feels like Tanaka is placing herself as one of the characters in the book. (Whether that’s true or not is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to avoid that feeling.)

Tanaka’s art is certainly good, but a little stiff. Tanaka uses stark, curved lines to create her characters, and when it comes to a portrait this works well. It’s only when you see more and more of her work that a certain sameness becomes more and more evident. I’m not 100% sure if Tanaka is using a computer to draw a dozen or so poses for characters and items and then re-use them, but I certainly got that impression here. It would certainly explain the stiffness in her characters, though, with them coming across unchanging from one panel to the next because the exact same drawing was used time and time again. Tanaka’s strength is definitely the tight focus that each panel has, using it almost like a television camera. By controlling exactly what the reader sees and keeping that focus fixed and narrow, it helps move the story along quickly and effortlessly. It’s a strong usage of a 16-panel grid, and I’m impressed that Tanaka never needed to break that pattern. I was a little surprised at first that the book’s contents are all rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, but after a brief moment I realized that Tanaka was making sure that people don’t treat the book as two-page spreads, reading across the top rows of panels of both pages as if it’s an 8×4 grid. By turning the book on its side, it keeps people reading in the right order, which made it a smart move for presentation.

Metronome is ultimately a book that I’m glad I read; while it may be a little rough in places and in need of some fine-tuning, it’s an interesting experiment and a good method of story-telling. Ironically I think the worst thing about Metronome is really the pompous back-cover text that crows about how good and innovative Metronome is. Don’t get me wrong, it is worth reading, but a little humility goes a long way, here. If Tanaka does another book down the line, I’ll be interested to see what she does.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

Comics in any country often have a large number of similar plot points or genres that get repeated from one work to the next, regardless of creator. From the evil sibling to the secret identity, seeing these ideas crop up over and over again becomes less and less of a surprise the more you read. In the case of Le Chevalier d’Eon, though, I must admit that Tou Ubukata and Kiriko Yumeji managed to sneak up on me with a well-known trope in Japanese manga. After my surprise faded, it hit me as to why they’d managed to get me—I’d never have expected it in a historical horror saga.

In 1742 Paris, King Louis XV rules over an uneasy France, his police trying to keep the peace by any means necessary. With a mad killer sacrificing virgins and using their blood to write demonic Psalms with supernatural powers, though, the Secret Police must be activated to stop these evil forces—and no member wants this stopped more than the mysterious Chevalier d’Eon. But no one would ever guess her own dark secret that connects her with the killings…

Reading the first volume of Le Chevalier d’Eon, it’s easy to expect the book to only be full of horror tropes and touchstones. After all, you’ve got the sacrificing of virgins, words written in blood, even spiritual possessions. But if you’ve gone into the series cold, the revelation in the first chapter that the Chevalier is in fact the deceased Lia de Beaumont, possessing her brother D’Eon de Beaumont during times of need? Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting gender-switching to show up here—while somewhat common in manga, it’s usually in works that are a bit lighter and is played a bit for laughs. It gets a little more interesting when you realize that this is based off of Ubakata’s novel of the same name, making one wonder if gender-swapping is just as common in Japanese prose.

More importantly, though, once you get past the early surprise factor of Le Chevalier d’Eon, this is a very solid horror comic. Ubakata and Yumeji’s adaptation of the novel feels well paced here, with this first volume having just the right level of creepiness at any given moment. It’s hard to not feel bad for just about all of the characters in this book, from the victims of the killers, to the royal family and their connections to the deaths, to D’Eon and Lia themselves. The story is always very serious, never treated as a joke or something even minorly amusing. It’s this straight-faced, unblinking attitude that helps maintain the creepy, slightly unnerving tone of the book. I am a little worried that Le Chevalier d’Eon is going to fall into the trap of so many books where each new installment becomes a rehash of the previous (a new wielder of the Psalms appears; D’Eon senses the latest evil and Lia possesses him; Lia as the Chevalier kills the new wielder of the Psalms) but the writing in the first book is strong enough that I’m willing to hope that Ubukata and Yumeji have more waiting up their sleeves.

Yumeji’s art in Le Chevalier d’Eon really helps set the tone of the story. It’s a dark, creepy style, using thick and uneven brush strokes that seem to waver and crawl across the page. It almost instantly brought to mind artists like Frank Teran and Danijel Zezelj and their own moody, distinctive art. Even pages that are supposed to seem somewhat innocent, like Lia looking over her shoulder at her page Robin have an air of creepiness about them, and it was at that point that I knew Yumeji was a great choice of artist for Le Chevalier d’Eon.

Le Chevalier d’Eon may have defied some of my expectations, but ultimately it did so in a good way. I’m already preparing to read the second and third volumes, and there are at least three more still in the pipeline, waiting to be translated. For those looking for a traditional historical horror comic, you certainly can’t go wrong here.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

Reading Cyril Pedrosa’s Three Shadows, I couldn’t help but think about the brief author’s biography provided in the end-flaps of the graphic novel. In it is the mention that Pedrosa was inspired to create the book after watching close friends lose a young child. It seems like a particularly grim thing to put up front, but at the same time I think it’s actually the smart thing to do. Providing context for this story makes what might feel like an overly long book instead makes its padding work in its favor.

Louis and Lise live a happy life with their young son Joachim. Everything seems perfect until the evening where Joachim wakes up, unable to sleep because of the three shadows on the hill. At first his parents laugh, until they see three dark-shrouded figures riding on horses, off on the hill. Or rather, until they see the horsemen over and over again. What had once seemed normal is now anything but, as Louis and Lise realize that these shadows are stalking their child, watching and waiting. Desperate to escape, Louis takes Joachim away from home—but how far will Louis go to try and save his son?

Viewed strictly as a creepy adventure story, Three Shadows is good but a little overly long. Once the chase begins, Pedrosa takes his characters into a number of new and dangerous settings; the problem is, it feels like a little too much. One quickly gets the basic message, that there is nothing that Louis won’t do to protect his son. It’s an admirable message, and very understandable. But how often does one need to hear the message? When Louis and Joachim set out on an adventure to cross the vast river that separates their home from Louis’s homeland, the change in scenery and situation is interesting. But afterwards, it just feels like too much, from the bayou to the tundra to the city. Honestly, the story itself slightly overstays its welcome, and I can see it making readers more than a little fidgety.

At the same time, though, it’s hard to avoid the book’s connection to the real events that Pedrosa saw. When you view it that way, it’s a little easier to accept the book’s slightly-too-long length, because it seems almost like that’s the point that Pedrosa is also trying to make. Even beyond the point where one should give up, parents will fight onwards to try and save their children, no matter what. It’s a strong, narrowly focused emotional core to the book and it made me think of Three Shadows in a slightly different way. It does mean that some of the comic relief towards the end of the book (in the city, with the three shadows pursuing their prey) feels a little misplaced when you think about it, but overall it’s additional knowledge that seems almost integral to the Three Shadows experience.

On the other hand, I’d take a 500-page edition of Three Shadows strictly for hundreds of additional pages of Pedrosa’s amazing art. It’s beautiful, using handfuls of curved thin lines to create drawings that really don’t look quite like anything else I’ve seen in comics. They’ve got a strong sense of grace and beauty to them, and it’s easy to to see Pedrosa’s animation background in their creations. Pedrosa shows a vast range of styles in Three Shadows as well, breaking away from his chosen look for the bulk of the book when appropriate. From thick brush strokes only giving vague outlines to their forms when Louis and Joachim leave home, to the heavy shading and charcoal smears upon Louis meeting the slave chained up in the captain’s cabin, to the usage of a scratchboard for a limited photo-negative effect for the view of the underworld, each shift in visuals is startling and amazingly effective. I’ve often said that I don’t pick up graphic novels in other languages because I would rapidly become penniless, but I might just have to make an exception if it means getting ahold of more of Pedrosa’s gorgeous art.

In the end, Three Shadows worked for me, but I’ll admit that it’s not a completely perfect book. Other readers might not be as forgiving of the book’s slightly bloated length, but for me I found myself in the end willing to accept it to help make Pedrosa’s point. And, as said before, his art is so amazing that in that sense alone it was well worth the additional pages. The one thing I know for certain is that if First Second (or any other publisher) brings more of Pedrosa’s work into English, I will absolutely be taking a look. Pedrosa’s art is simply stunning, and for that alone it demands your attention.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

“What if you could go back and do it all again?” It’s a pretty familiar question, one asked both in real life as well as in fiction. Generally speaking, my immediate reaction has always been, “Why on earth would I want to?” With his new graphic novel Too Cool To Be Forgotten, though, Alex Robinson has found a satisfactory answer to that question and in a way that actually makes me wish I really could go back.

Andy Wicks is on the verge of turning 40 and has tried everything possible to quit smoking. He’s finally agreed to his wife’s suggestion to try a holistic center’s approach, where they’re going to hypnotize him to try and curb his addiction to cigarettes. When Andy closes his eyes, he expects to open them back up with the urge gone. Instead, he finds himself back in high school, but with all of the knowledge that he already possess as an adult. Does he need to change his life so at the fateful party where he first tried smoking, he instead asks out and kisses the hot girl he has his eyes on? Or is it a little more complicated than just that?

Too Cool To Be Forgotten really has two different stories going on at the same time, although at a glance it may at first seem like there’s only one there. On the surface, it’s about Andy fumbling his way through high school a second time, trying to use what he’s learned since then to do things better and smarter. So he’s trying to reach out to the outcast kid, standing up for himself against bullies, and take chances where in the past he’d missed out on out because he was afraid. It’s an interesting end result, with some attempts being more successful than others. On that level, it’s a fun book, with Robinson putting Andy in the same sort of dilemmas that most of us would also be in were we to travel into our past. It’s worth a few chuckles, and it’s nice that Robinson recognizes that a sudden change of heart won’t automatically fix everything if given another chance.

At the same time, though, there’s a much more serious story that’s going on in Too Cool To Be Forgotten. It’s clearly present throughout the entire book, although a casual reader might miss some of the hints and clues left by Robinson until it all finally comes to a head in the conclusion of the book. That’s where Too Cool To Be Forgotten really grabbed me, providing a good reason to want to go back into our own past. It’s the emotional core of the book, and it’s told in a very heartfelt and strong way; while in some ways it comes out a little rushed as the book heads towards its conclusion, but I think that’s almost the way that Robinson needed to tell it. All of Andy’s emotions pouring out of him in one fell swoop fits, and makes the moment more believable in how someone would really act in that situation. The end result is a much more satisfying ending than simply, “I stopped myself from smoking in the past” with something that makes much more sense, both intellectually and emotionally.

Robinson’s art in Too Cool To Be Forgotten is up to his normal standards. Robinson does a good job with keeping his teenagers looking like, well, teenagers. They’re drawn as gawky, stumbling, still-growing kids; you know, exactly what you’ll find in high schools around the world. From Andy’s mop of hair to his braces and huge glasses, he both looks a little silly and also sympathetic at the same time, and it’s a fun visual take on the characters. Robinson thankfully doesn’t go overboard on ’80s fashions, something that would have been very easy to do. Instead it’s there but restrained, not drawing attention to itself. For me, though, the high point of the art is when Andy goes to the big party; it’s such a spot-on perfect depiction of a high school party with the mix of people and activities going on in both the foreground and background that it brought back my own flood of memories from that time period. It’s startling spot-on, and perhaps also a reminder that some things are universal no matter who you are or where you were.

After his lengthy Box Office Poison and Tricked, it’s nice to see Robinson tackle something smaller in page size like Too Cool To Be Forgotten and show that he can handle that length story as well. It’s a strong final product, and something with which to be proud of. Robinson fans will definitely be quite pleased with the book, and if you’ve never tried out Robinson’s books in the past it’s certainly a good way to begin. Too Cool To Be Forgotten is scheduled for a July 2008 release

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

What I think I like the most about the announcement of a new Hope Larson book is that you never really know what to expect. The only real constant between her first two graphic novels, Salamander Dream and Gray Horses, was a quiet, graceful sort of quality in how she told the story. So while it’s no surprise that her new book Chiggers has that in spades, my one real surprise was how while it’s the most grounded in the real world of her books to date, she’s still able to bring bits of the fantastical into the story—and how well they fit.

Abby’s back at summer camp, with friends from last year returning as well as a chance to make new ones. When her bunkmate leaves early on, she’s replaced by Shasta, a new and slightly mysterious girl. She and Abby seem to have a lot in common, but Abby’s other friends don’t trust Shasta. Are they picking up on something that Abby isn’t? And is Shasta really telling the truth about being struck by lightning, or is something else going on?

Larson’s basic story—teens at summer camp and the friendships and struggles they have—is a pretty familiar one. What made it stand out for me, though, was the particular methods that she used to tell it. She’s got a great gift for character voices, making Abby, Shasta, and the rest all really sound like teenagers. Little moments, like Abby’s glee about chicken burgers and eating things at are breaded just sounds perfect. I also really appreciated that she’s not afraid to make her characters a little geeky, something atypical in books about teenage girls. The fact that Abby’s into fantasy and role-playing games, or that Shasta has a boyfriend that she knows through instant-messaging, really stands out as something different and interesting. Best of all, though, is the bits of the magical and unexplained that Larson weaves throughout Chiggers. I love that Larson never explains the stranger moments of the book, from the sparks of electricity flowing out of Shasta’s hair one night, to the dramatic conclusion of the book and its unreal happenings. A dream, a natural phenomenon, or something entirely different? It’s not entirely clear, and Larson wisely doesn’t delve too deeply into it. All you really need to know is that it happened, and move onwards.

The way Larson draws the book is great as well. There’s something about the way her characters have deep eyes and heavy locks of hair that makes it unmistakably Larson’s creation. She’s got such a handle on expressions that her characters can bring so much to the story without actually needing their dialogue. From Abby’s awe-filled smile as she finds out that Shasta knows her boyfriend through IMs, to Shasta’s almost tranquil expression as her hair floats up into the air, it’s a beautiful creation. The art sells the story 100%, and it’s this grace and careful construction of each page that makes it such a beautiful thing to own.

Chiggers in the end shares the one most important thing with Larson’s other books, and that’s her sense of style in telling a story. Summer camp stories may be a dime a dozen, but the way that Larson brings Chiggers to life is what makes it stand out from the rest of the pack. Hitting stores in June, it’s a perfectly timed release to for readers of all ages heading into their own summer.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

In what seems to be a trend these days, Jellaby was a web comic that I absolutely loved, only to have it go on hiatus because of a print edition being announced by a major publisher. When Kean Soo announced the change in status for Jellaby back in early 2006, I hadn’t counted on needing to wait almost two years to see the end result. The one bright side, though? Having read the first 60 odd pages already, I knew that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Portia is a girl that is perhaps too smart for her own good. Her classmates at best ignore her, at worst pick on her. She doesn’t really have any friends. So every day she goes home to her mother, and lives a quiet and lonely life. Then a strange dream wakes her up in the middle of the night, and that’s when she discovers a dragon-like creature with tiny little wings, alone and abandoned in the middle of the forest. She can’t just leave him out there, scared and confused. And that’s when things in Portia’s life really start moving.

Jellaby is the sort of book that it’s really hard not to like. (Seriously, I think you’d genuinely have to try to dislike it.) Soo’s character of Portia hits all of the right buttons for me—she’s smart and strong-willed, but at the same time she’s not perfect. In some ways she’s as tough as a grown-up, but at heart she’s still a kid, with all the mistakes and troubles that entails. It sounds silly, but I really liked the fact that even though she’s a person who clearly is smarter than most of her classmates, their respect or even attention still means a lot to her; the scene where she brings in her toy pony and wants to play with the other girls speaks volumes about Portia’s character, and makes her that much more realistic. Likewise, her classmate Jason’s refusal to give his lunchbox up to the bullies, even though he knows what will happen, is one of those great moments where you see just how determined and persistent a 10-year-old can be. Add in the quiet innocence—but backed with a knowledge of what is right and wrong—from Jellaby and you end up with a trio of characters that can easily carry the book.

The plot itself is good, too. Soo sets up several mysteries for the reader, from Jellaby’s strange appearance, to the curious purple door in the newspaper, the fate of Portia’s father, and the strange man that’s stalking Jellaby and Portia. There’s plenty of action, and Soo lets it slowly escalate throughout the book, starting with a schoolyard fight and graduating with a chase through a moving train. It grabs the attention easily, and at the end of the first volume it’s hard to not want to start whimpering about needing the next installment quickly. That said, I must say that when it comes to a bit of slapstick Soo proves himself to be truly in his element; Portia’s attempts to hide Jellaby (and how does one hide a purple dragon?) are chuckle-inducing and provide a nice dose of comic relief whenever the book gets too serious.

Last but not least, Soo’s art is beautiful. I recently raved about his work in Flight Explorer Vol. 1, and I’ll do so here as well. I love the way he draws the book, with its soft and gentle edges and colors. The purple-hued look to the book makes it really stand out in a good way, providing a pleasing overall look to the pages. You could easily strip all the dialogue out of the book and still understand what’s going on, from Portia’s bored, daydreaming expressions in class, to Jason’s look of utter shock at the appearance of Jellaby (even as Portia desperately tries to shove him back out the window). Each page is a real delight to look at, both because of how well Soo tells the story from panel to panel as well how he renders every single character.

Jellaby Vol. 1 is a gorgeous, thoroughly entertaining book. I’d actually almost forgotten how much I loved Jellaby until I read this first volume, and then it captured my heart all over again. With books like Amulet, Flight Explorer, Salt Water Taffy, and Jellaby being published, it is an awfully good time to be a younger reader in comics. Then again, to be fair, Jellaby (and all the other books just mentioned) have one even more important thing in common—they aren’t just for younger readers. Jellaby truly is a book that can and will be enjoyed by readers of all ages. Highly recommended.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

When I was a child, one of my favorite books to check out from the library was what I’ve come to think of as, “children’s vacation adventure.” It’s a book where the main characters are school children off on a trip (often but not always their summer vacation), where what may seem to be a boring place turns out to be anything but. It’s a tried and true set-up, in no small part because the reader more often than not can project themselves into the same situation, wishing that their less-than-exciting vacation suddenly was full of magical creatures and items. I know that over the years, books like Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone or Edward Eager’s Magic by the Lake grabbed my attention quite firmly on many a long trip. Matthew Loux is using that same basis for his new graphic novel series Salt Water Taffy: The Seaside Adventures of Jack and Benny. And you know, I can’t help but think that kids will be just entranced by Loux’s graphic novel as I was by my books back in the day.

Jack and Benny are being forced to spend their entire summer in Chowder Bay, Maine, because their parents think it will be fun. With no television and the batteries in Jack’s Gameboy rapidly running down, this looks like it might be the worst vacation ever. Then Jack and Benny see a mysterious shape sliding across the beach—could it be a bear? Or something far stranger and more deadly? When they meet local fisherman Angus O’Neil, he’s more than happy to tell them about the mysterious Old Salty lurking below the ocean’s waves. And that’s just the start of the trouble…

Salt Water Taffy is a book that could be used almost as a lesson in how to properly pace a story. Not a single one of its 96 pages are wasted; it starts by introducing Jack, Benny, and their family, then slowly expands outwards to bring the town of Chowder Bay, its inhabitants, the children’s ally, and finally their nemesis into the greater picture. Because Loux introduces them one at a time, it never feels rushed or like exposition is being dumped on the reader; at the same time, it moves along at a fast enough clip that at no point did I ever feel like Salt Water Taffy was dragging. The story itself is a lot of fun, fighting lobsters and solving the mystery of missing salt water taffy, while simultaneously adding in new and strange things to be explored in later volumes. (There’s a fantastic reveal towards the end of the first book involving a stranger in town that is just screaming for seeing more of, and soon.) There’s a moment about halfway through the book when Jack’s mother offers up new batteries for the Gameboy, and Jack instead rushes off in search of more real-world adventure, and you absolutely understand why he does so—Salt Water Taffy is fun, pure and simple.

Loux’s art is nicely attractive, with thick, sharp, angular ink lines that carefully outline each character. It’s a neat look; sure, people’s elbows don’t really come to a fine point but under Loux’s brush it seems very natural and cool. It’s a good way to draw his cast; everyone’s got very expressive faces, and Loux seems to delight in having Jack and Benny leap across the page from one panel to the next. With this much energy in the art, it’s easy to see why the book feels like it moves at such a good clip. I also really like the attention to detail in the backgrounds of the book, from the individual floorboards and decorations in the taffy shop to the rocks and grasses dotting the shoreline, it helps Chowder Bay really come to life for the reader. I must say, though, that looking at the color cover makes me kind of wish that this book was all in color. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the black and white end product—but there’s something about the cover that just grabs my attention so much more that I’m now dying to see a full color book by Loux.

When I finished reading Salt Water Taffy Vol. 1: The Legend of Old Salty, my first thought was, “I can’t believe it’s already over!” My second thought was, “Then again, a lot did happen in just this installment.” Loux packs a lot of fun into this book, and with each new twist and turn it just gets more and more entertaining. You’ll read it quickly not because it’s short, but rather because it’s hard to not want to read it as fast as you can… so that you can go back to the first page and start all over again. Fun, fun, fun from start to finish. More, please.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

I still remember when David Lapham’s Stray Bullets #1 first hit stores. It was a huge leap forward for him artistically, and the writing was like nothing I’d have expected from Lapham. At the time he was best known for his work on books like Harbinger and Warriors of Plasm; his gritty, urban crime story was a far cry from psychic teenagers or inter-dimensional gladiators. With the debut of his new series Young Liars for Vertigo, I was ready to be blown away with a new Lapham creation. What I found, though? Certainly not what I was expecting.

A group of friends in Manhattan are a disparate bunch—the uninhibited and reckless daughter of a billionaire, her rocker-wanna-be boyfriend from Texas, a jaded drag queen, a bitter anorexic has-been model, a rock band groupie, and a spoiled daddy’s boy. They’re hanging out together, even though one of them may have betrayed another three months ago. Now they’re all about to go on a journey with no definite ending in sight, but one that certainly won’t end well.

If I’d read the first two issues of Young Liars without knowing who’d worked on the book, one of my first instincts would have been that the creator really wanted to be Lapham. That’s not really a compliment, though, doubly so once you realize that it is Lapham writing and drawing Young Liars. One of the things I’d liked about Stray Bullets was that it started small and grew over time, almost like a series of concentric circles where each new ring was bigger than the previous one, but contained everything that had happened up until that point in time. Young Liars goes the other route, dumping you right into the middle of everything and throwing everything short of the kitchen sink at the reader. The problem is, I don’t think this approach really works here. His main characters come across as less than sympathetic right from the start, and even more crucially it’s hard to want to learn about them. Early on you discover that Sadie has a bullet lodged in her brain that will eventually kill her, and it’s that bullet which has caused her moral and emotional centers to be damaged. The thing is, though, by this point she’s already come across as crass and obnoxious and a bit of an annoyance. She’s so over the top that it’s hard to see her as anything but a caricature, and I genuinely found myself cringing when she showed up. That’s a problem that just about all of the characters in the first issue have; even the ones that Donnie’s narration says you should like have a singular lack of a hook to make you interested in their travails. When Truman shows up and starts whining about how his daddy won’t help him from getting evicted from the co-op, it doesn’t matter that Donnie says Truman is liked by everyone. Instead he just comes across as immature and grating, and he’s hardly the only member of the cast to be this way.

Things in some ways actually get worse instead of better in the second issue. Flashing back three years earlier in Donnie’s life, before he came to Manhattan, I can only imagine that the idea here is to gain some sort of sympathy for everything Donnie’s gone through. Instead, though, it actually made me hate him a little more. Between his constant suicide fantasies, his lack of caring that his friend just sexually assaulted another member of their band (aside from needing a new bass player), or his perpetual crying that he loves Sadie and is feeling betrayed (even though he’s never even spoken to her and only seen her once from afar), he’s an amazingly unlikable character. You don’t want him to do well, you actually start wanting to see him fail. By the time you get to what I can only imagine is supposed to be a shocking finale to the story, it’s just a relief that the issue is finally over.

The art, at least, isn’t bad when it comes to Young Liars. There are things here that Lapham does well, like Sadie’s mean-eyed look, or her sudden shift over to hedonism. I like how he draws the characters in general, even if some of them look a little familiar (Donnie and Truman, for instance), and he’s not afraid to use a lot of panels on a page to get his story told; eight-page grids are drawn almost matter-of-factly, letting Lapham focus tightly on a single character or moment and get a lot of information across on a single page. The one thing I’m less than crazy about is Lee Loughridge’s coloring in the first issue; it’s garish and actually a little hard to look at with all of its greens and purples. Things are thankfully much more toned down in the second issue, still showing a lot of variety but without looking like a stylistic nightmare.

The one thing that grabbed my attention with Young Liars is the lack of continuity between the two issues. If you read them back to back, there’s a real lack of a reliable narrator between them. Events in the two don’t sync up; comments that Donnie makes about his family in the first issue don’t match the second one, and Sadie’s behavior three years before the near-fatal shooting incident seem remarkably similar to those afterwards. It makes me wonder just how apt the title Young Liars really is, because something really doesn’t add up here. At the same time, though, it’s not really enough to make me want to stick around and find out. It’s a bit of a quandary in the end, because I have three beautiful Stray Bullets oversized hardcovers on my bookshelf, and I would absolutely love for the long promised fourth one to show up, as well a fifth and (once one more issues of the series was released) sixth hardcover. And I can’t help but think that if Young Liars does well, it will perhaps help fund Lapham’s publishing of the rest of Stray Bullets. But you know what? I just can’t get behind Young Liars. I wish I could. But this feels like a tremendous letdown, on a number of levels.

Never let it be said that I don’t have a sense of humor. With so many different comics hitting the stands, one often has to make quick decisions on if a book will make the “review stack” or not, these days. In the case of Harold Sipe and Hector Casanova’s Screamland #1, I glanced at the first three pages—and promptly laughed so hard that I knew this was making the pile. I can’t think of a better way to make sure someone buys your book.

For the classic monsters of an earlier era—Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy—most of them are probably still wishing that earlier era is still around. They’re all still looking for work, be it bad movies or even signing autographs for money at conventions in the midwest. Frank’s just about given up all hope, and thanks to a series of bad investments can’t afford to be too choosy. But is it really worth leaping back into a big-budget movie with all his old buddies again if it means he has to play the lumbering villain? Even if that movie is starring one of the hot young stars of today?

I think what grabbed my attention about Screamland is that Sipe takes a pretty basic idea—classical monsters alive and real in today’s world—and brings his own stamp of humor to it. Websites for people who want to hook up with monsters? It’s hysterical but at the same time it takes a basic thrust of today’s society and follows it through to a logical conclusion. Of course there would be one, no matter how much people may wish otherwise. Struggling actor monsters? That makes sense too, that beyond a certain point it would get harder and harder for most of them to keep getting work. There’s also a nice vein of humor that runs through Screamland #1; Frank’s dreams about a monster-porn film gone horribly wrong are funny and pathetic at the same time. That said, though, my one real complaint is that Screamland #1 seems to end very quickly. Maybe it’s because of the dream sequences that take away 4 1/2 of its 22 pages of story (the first one was great, the second one probably could have gone without), but it felt almost like once the exposition was over and the plot was starting to reveal itself, it’s the end of the issue. With any luck, though, we’ll see a little more of that in the next installment now that the heavy lifting of the set-up is taken care of.

Casanova’s art is a real treat. He’s got a great sense of anatomy and body language; the scene where Frank first wakes up on the pool lounger holding his head is composed perfectly. You can get a sense of slow movement from him, the way he’s pulling up his left leg and starting to move his arms. It doesn’t feel posed or stiff, and the end result is a real testament to his skills. His takes on the different monsters are really good here as well; from the green pallor of Frank’s skin, to the Wolfman’s hair hanging over the top of his wife-beater tank top, there’s a lot of care and thought that’s brought to life here. Add in rich colors and detailed backgrounds, and a good sense of sequence from one panel to the next, and I’m quite a fan of Casanova’s work. With his rough-hewn edges to his characters, it reminds me a tiny bit of artists like Ted McKeever, and that’s a good sort of style or influence to detect.

Screamland #1 is a fun start to Sipe and Casanova’s mini-series. Now that the set-up is done with, I’m hoping to see a strong pace for the remaining four issues. But you know what? Even if the four remaining issues turn out to be a bust (and I don’t think that they will) this first issue was enough fun that I feel like I’ve already gotten a high enough entertainment value from the book. Here’s to the remaining installments holding up to that promise.