Graffic Traffic
It’s not the Heat… It’s the Sweaty People…
by Ryk McIntyre
Somehow, and don’t quote me on this, but Summer and Image Comics are two tastes that… gravitate towards one another. As I said, don’t quote me… Honestly, I don’t understand why Image hasn’t taken the hint from the respectably successful Spawn movie (it came out last summer, around the time of the bitchin’ soundtrack), but no doubt they soon will… they soon will… they gotta. There’s money in it. Anyway, to their credit, they send us about one of everything, every month, for possible review. I wish DC and some others would do that. Wait. Let me rephrase that slightly…
Anyway, from amongst this month’s Image bounty comes a full-color, non-superhero book, Bohos (Maggie Whoff: the writing on the wall; Byron Penaranda: the pictures in your head), and it’s rather charming in an “I never went to Lollapalooza, but here’s a comic book just like it!” kind of way. Actually, it deserves better than that smarmy intro. It’s an actual story, not everything is supplied for you in the exposition, and all this by combining four young friends going to a big concert, a flirtation that promises more to come, a riot, and some TV exposure for our crew. Plus, the book features a conspicuous PSA about breast cancer, and it prints a bunch of stuff emailed in by young teens. So though it’s probably not even intended for someone as aged as myself, I still like it. I hope it’s not just a one-shot in the wind. I’d like to know more about these people.Next, I read the first two issues of the Degen-X vampire story, Crimson (Cliffhanger/Brian Augustyn: words, Humberto (Impulse, Young Justice) Ramos: pencils, Sandra Hope: inks), which has a kind of Rolling Stone/Interview With The Vampire approach, but, y’know… it’s fun. FUN! Colorful, eye-catching Ameri-Anime, and bloody! Plus, check out the bad vampire who wears tops designed by Wendy O. Willams… y’know… before she crossed over.
I’ll be honest, I don’t keep a tight scope on this next book, but why is it that every time I pick up a copy of Spawn (Todd McFarlane & whoever else He’s hired), while I don’t know exactly what’s going on, it still seems to fit into what vague story I remember. Yeah, yeah, there’s this coming war between Heaven and Hell, and a Hell-Spawn yet yearns Heavenward (we know this) and… Incidentally, does all this stuff count when we go see Spawn II, and is there a test at the end of it?
Much more interesting is Warren Ellis’s deconstruction of StormWatch (Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary do the Art). I understand that this all leads into the ending of the title, and that cinema’s Aliens has a lot to do with it… I could be wrong, I read a lot of books… I’ll read Warren’s post-SW title just cause he writes it.
Also worth a look-see is CodeBlue (a well-done b/w by Jimmie Robinson) which tells of a city with great class division where hospitals vary in health-care quality according to the socioeconomic location. Y’know, a real work of fiction.
Similarly, the Legends of the DC Universe 80 Page Giant (various writers and artists) disappoints as it attempts to recapture the feel of those giant summer anthology titles and some old, classic characters, right down to style-apeing the clumsy writing and primitive art. The HawkMan/HawkWoman story is enough to have you swear off humans as a species.
Lastly, and I recommend this title as often as I do as much for its quality as for the fact that I need to get off it and not sound so grumpy, Naughty Bits #26 (Fantagraphics/ Roberta Gregory: layin’ down the law and drawin’ the lines) is as good as ever, and even better. This is the issue where BitchyBitch finally gets laid, and gets laid goooood. Not that her life, her job, and her co-workers change or improve at all, but at least she’s gettin’ some good sweatin’.
Sometimes that’s more than enough…