Revival #22

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

Revival's "passengers" are more and more an enigma.  The baby Majak and Don snared in their dreamcatchers is a pitiful sight, but a dangerous one, one that Don insists must be "sent back".  In trying to find a host, it killed Majak's beloved dog Chuck and attempted to possess Majak himself, to force his own spirit out of his body to make room.  But the "ghost man" in New York City is, if anything, working to restore the balance of the living and the dead, killing once and for all the risen and cannibalistic dead, those who prolong their own lives by eating the flesh of the Wisconsin Revivers.

And so re-enter Anders Hine, the buffet dinner for New York's elitist dining club ΩΣΟ, the rich and self-entitled and entirely convinced of their own deserving of immortality.  Hine is clearing up loose ends:  the butcher and smuggler Koziol and reporter Fields.  But the ghost is cleaning up his loose ends, incinerating the corpses of the would-be Revivers.

Meanwhile, Em Cypress falls into a potentially sweet, definitely masochistic and destructive, and probably (if unknowingly) exploitative affair with Reviver internet sensation Road Rash.  He knows her, at least part of her, better than anyone.  He sees her scars for what they are, her demonstrations of defiance as tacit pleas to be known, and he knows how to please her and he knows how to offer.  But where Em is private, intimate, Rhodey Rasch is an exhibitionist, both by trade and temperament.  His subscription channel is the darkest of Reviver masochism, just short of self-snuff.  Though it's difficult not to respond in kind with Em, his devastation at her revulsion is heartfelt.  His bafflement at her entirely justifiable horror at his taping their sex is foolish (and criminal) but sincere.  His plea as she storms away—"I-- I'm good for you." (Revival #22: 19)—is stunned and pathetic.

But the most significant strides in the development of the central mystery actually come from Ramin and his ill-advised appointment with Rose Black Deer, a local fortune teller and palm reader who drugs him with peyote, hypnotizes him into revealing details about the Reviver facility, and turns him loose as she must.  As Ramin reports his indiscretion, an anonymous voice on the other end of the phone ominously assures, "There will be repercussions" (18).  Black Deer may not have long, but her knowledge of John Doe the first Reviver is tantalizing.

[July 2014]

Dream Thief: Escape #2

written by Jai Nitz
art by Greg Smallwood

Holy Miami Vice, Batman!  Dream Thief: Escape continues its cautionary fable with the mercy killing of Guy Hogan, a man driven mad along with the ghost inside him by not being able to satisfy his revenge.  Restrained in a straight jacket, kept locked in an abandoned alligator hunting shack off the Florida Turnpike, and having chewed off his own tongue, there was little left of Hogan in the end.  And only after fifty or so ghosts after nearly a decade as a Dream Thief.

John Lincoln is moving at a much swifter click than that.

Although Dream Thief: Escape #2 barely advances the plot of the prison break—Lincoln resolves to employ his "spectral law degree" (8) to release Ray Ray Benson, currently possessed by his father, on bond by questioning a signature and arrange for Patricio Brown-Eagle's killing while out for a psychiatric evaluation—but it does revisit Lincoln's attempts to reconcile his memories of his ghosts' lives.  While contributing to the G.B.I. report on Brown-Eagle for the murder of John's girlfriend Claire—a murder which he himself committed while possessed by Armando Cordero, Claire's undeserving victim—Lincoln is visibly shaken.  Though Agent Simon and John's sister Jenny assume it's the memory of Claire, it is, in fact, the visceral memories of Cordero:  his fear and confusion as Claire killed him and the fond, loving and a little regretful recollection of his father.  When Lincoln drops by to visit Lalo Cordero, the results are charming and a little heartsick.  John Lincoln is able to offer a lonely father some consolation but no resolution.  Nevertheless, he's never been more winning.

It may very well be that series artist Greg Smallwood understands Dream Thief's protagonist better than does its writer Jai Nitz.  While his character work is solid throughout, his settings atmospheric and often humorous, Lincoln's expressions and body language are flawless.  His sheepishly honest shrug as he admits he'll get Ray Ray out the old-fashioned way—"I'll lie" (7)—is perfect.

Suicide Risk #11

"Seven Walls and a Pit Trap," Part 1 (of 3)
written by Mike Carey
art by Elena Casagrande

And so, we meet Requiem.  What once had been a dark, powerful voice in Leo's head and the shades of another man's memory have now emerged, pushing Leo into the mute recesses of his newly awoken brain.  He's stoic and a little ruthless when provoked, but Requiem is refreshingly not an unreasonable man, especially under the circumstances.  He may be callous in revealing Leo's affair to his wife, but he's also sympathetic to the possibility that she may also be a victim in his incarceration, at least before his paranoia gets the better of his judgment.

This, after all, is not his world.  It's familiar, but only more foreign in its familiarity, a grotesque mockery of the world he knows.  And now Leo's a constant, irritating voice of defiance in his head, a man with memories Requiem can only partially account for.  And his powers are fighting him.

"Christina, I have to get home.  My powers are almost useless here.  Everything resists me.  Even small applications of power come hard.  Wider ones are impossible."  (Suicide Risk #11: 13)

It's a rather unexpected turn.  Perhaps it's because Requiem is accustomed to so much more control and so much greater mastery, or perhaps by belonging to this world, Leo possesses an easier, more intuitive control of their shared powers.  Here, at least.

Even now, it's difficult to tease out just which pieces of Leo's life belonged once to Requiem, what are entirely his own, and what they share.  They share a likeness, but do they share a body?  Is Leo's daughter Tracey also Requiem's daughter Terza?  Was she, like Requiem, trapped in a foreign world or born into Leo's?  She, after all, looks very like her mother, and she shows no evidence of a dual personality.  Requiem may have distanced himself from his peers as a superpowered figure, but it seems he may very well be surpassed by his daughter.

Meanwhile, Dr. Maybe escapes, and he's very interested in Leo.  And now, thanks to shady eavesdropping on Tracey and Danny Winters, he also now knows that she can rip through worlds.

FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #12

"Wish You Were Here," Part Five
written by Simon Oliver
art by Robbi Rodriguez

"Just like rivers, reality never follows a straight course, it meanders and weaves across the landscape.  Twisting and turning, seeking the easiest route from A to B... and the longer they stay immersed, the more chance the two flows of reality will cross.

Details and incidents merging, to influence events on both sides of reality... ...Reality Confluence..."  (FBP #12: 7-8)

Adam and Rosa's world, the reality they're creating together, is merging with Cicero and Sen's.  Details betray the "confluence":  the white-out snow storm, the sudden unpredictability of Nakeet's wormholes, the gas-less truck.  But Rosa still wants to return home, and she's devised the technology to do it.

Oliver's high-concept physics contortions may be difficult to follow, inaccessible and disorienting to casual readers and still strikingly puzzling to committed ones, but his characters are spot on.  Presented with the imminent promise of returning to her home dimension and finding Adam near freezing in the snow, Rosa warms him with a sweet and assured seduction that moves in dream logic between the snowy Alaskan wilderness to a research warehouse, Adam recovering his senses in Rosa's arms.  Unlike the guarded Adam whose casual affairs were tender but emotionally aloof, he is pleasantly honest with Rosa about his attraction to her, one that has kept him engaged but off-balance since meeting her, one that recognizes their chemistry and compatibility even as he prepares to let her go.  Even Cicero's brief appearance at the beginning of the issue reinforces his stoic faith in his team...and his quiet sense of humor about his fabulous hair.  However convoluted FBP's sci-fi mythology may become, if Oliver maintains such tight, riveting control over his characters, FBP remains a series to follow.

Then there's Rodriguez' stellar artwork, whose clean, stylized lines give way to a frustrated realism in Nakeet's storm, a feat that reproduces the blinding haze of heavy snow, obscuring the details, washing out its colors, and amplifying its light.  Adam and Rosa's hook-up—first abstracted from Professor Sen's artful description of "reality confluence"—becomes a beautiful, neon masterpiece.  Rico Renzi's colors, both cool and fiery, add flavor, a convincing impression of the erotic attraction these two feel for one another, an explosion of pink and orange before settling satisfied back into the title's more conventional palate.

[September 2014]

Black Science #7

written by Rick Remender
art by Matteo Scalera
painted art by Dean White

For every new world, another cold open.  Black Science's alien worlds continue to be a glorious cacophony zoological and fantastical influences fused in a crucible of historical and sci-fi milieux.  From the skull-littered dungeon kitchens of eyeless raptor overlords, little more than yawning maws with razor teeth and eager tongues, Rebecca, Shawn, Pia and Nate are trussed for consumption at a festival feast, set to be eaten raw and alive.  The pillar has again been unkind.

But, on the heels of McKay's death and his deathbed promise to his scientist rival, this is now Kadir's story.  Unlike McKay's unbridled idealism rooted in his own ego, Kadir's more than personally aware of the inevitable cost of things.  Like keeping promises.  The pillar is not an instrument of solving his world's problems, but of collapsing and compounding the problems of all worlds.  But now, he may very well be warming to being, wanting to be the hero.

Kadir, with a smirk:  Who's a sleazy shitbag now, huh?

Shawn:  You are!  You're the sleazy shitbag!

Kadir, once again stern:  Fair enough.  Take the hatchet--get the others free-- --and hold on tight.  (Black Science #7: 10)

Black Science #7 is primarily an escape thriller, a break-neck getaway in a chariot pulled by a fish-horse with ostrich legs being chased by a giant, flying, sea-spewing hippopotamus.  But it is also laced with interdimensional mystery.  Nearly at their death, a telepathic centipede prophet, one of three sporting the same onion logo that keeps following the space-hoppers through their worlds, proclaims their importance before he is devoured by the ravenous feasters:  "No!  Walk this dream with open eyes!  Hitchhikers passing through the winding ways--you bring us emancipation!  Calm your minds, good travelers!  Die here and live within the unbounded avatars!  Know it in your hearts--this service is our choice!  You have played a significant role in the unfolding!  Be proud!  Be--" (6).  Though it is unlikely to manifest in this particular world, there's a persistent flavor of revolutionary destiny about them.

The Dream Merchant #4

written by Nathan Edmondson
art by Konstantin Novosadov

More than a year after its last issue, The Dream Merchant resumes its sleep-no-more thriller.  The invasion of regulators—the "migration" as the Dream Merchant describes it—has begun at the fringes.  And Winslow is a hero as weakened and deflated himself as his circumstances make him, but he's beginning not only to understand but feel some responsibility, some spark of motivation to save himself and the world.  By the end of the issue, as Winslow seeks sleep alone, downing a bottle of NyQuil in a tub, looking strung out, knowing he will be afraid but doing it anyway, the hero of Edmondson's supernatural fable finally takes his sword.

Nevertheless, Anne continues to be The Dream Merchant's brightest star.  Unflappable in the face of danger and unaccountable weirdness, she keeps her head and her humor, delighted that the trio will find something to eat and and curious to know the Merchant's affection for Earth.  But her rebuff of Winslow's attempt at a good-luck/goodbye kiss that steals the issue, a subversive slap-in-the-face to apocalyptic romances:

"The world is about to end, you're the only one who can stop it and you're thinking about making out?  Pathetic, dude!  Get over it and nut up and go do something!"  (The Dream Merchant #4: 17)

Novosadov's artwork, loopy and shaggy as it may sometimes seem, is unnervingly creepy.  Along with Stefano Simeone's haunting coloring, it gives The Dream Merchant the look of a truly horrific children's story.  Winslow's piercingly white eyes beam out of his hollow, shadowed face as he first wakes from his dream.  The horned monster is something out of a nightmare fantasy.  And the flush of eerie pink, the light that takes his eyes, and his stretched skin as Winslow moves into the dream world is a phantasm of possession and death.  The Dream Merchant may be a beautiful book, but it's one that lingers in the back of your eyes.

East of West #13

Thirteen:  Dead Lands Comin'
written by Jonathan Hickman
art by Nick Dragotta
colors by Frank Martin

If the Ranger is a crack sniper, one of few more than a handful that could take off Cheveyo's head from 96 kilometers away—"And, bless their lethal souls...they've all long departed this mortal plane" (East of West #13: 7)—Death is a supernatural one, even with only the one eye and a revolver.  Death's predictably angered by the Ranger's interference, another obstacle in his search for his son.  Their brawl, a rather petulant display of mutually inflicted retribution, as though a little ass-kicking could satisfy or redress the inconvenience, is more braggadocio and hot air, but it's also a slick, humorous, Old West-styled introduction of two men who might just as easily be allies as adversaries.

The other unintended consequence of Cheveyo's assassination:  He was killed in the dead lands, at the border between this world and the other, and whatever the intent of the bullet, it paid the blood price to open the door.  It takes an uncharacteristic exposition dump to establish the rules and the stakes, and it feels a little out of place in Hickman's typically rich but spartan prose.  But it's a fine, very fine and tender exchange between Wolf and Crow, one mourning the death of his father, the other regretfully begging for his help to ward off the coming beasts.  When she gently lifts his face, she gasps at his newly tear-stained face now perfectly mirroring her own, the tattoo of a pain we don't yet know.

"Your father left something of his soul here in the waking world.  It will grow and gather the balance from the ether.  HUAARRK!   In death... he's deceived us all... He's eluded our grasp and paying his due... And he's tricked you in offering up your soul."  (23)

As the dead soul takes the dead witch's body, stalking away with his new bone-skull body, Wolf surrenders something perhaps more than he realizes.

[July 2014]

Southern Bastards #2

"Here Was a Man," Part Two
written by Jason Aaron
art by Jason Latour

Earl Tubb:  First thing tomorrow, I'm headed back to Birmingham.  Just come to see a game before I go.  I used to play on this field myself.  Ain't seen the Rebs in years though.

Tad:  Bull crap.  You didn't come to see the Rebs.  You come to see him.  (Southern Bastards #2: 7)

And so we meet Coach Boss, she shadowy crime-and-football kingpin of Craw County, Alabama, a broad, menacing figure prowling the sidelines of a highschool football field.

Southern Bastards #2 rings of destiny for Earl Tubb.  No doubt, Earl is a stubbornly good man, whose frustrated righteousness at Craw County's decay into the worst of redneck apathy in the shadow of its thuggish bullies provokes his own intractable sense of justice.  When Dusty, beaten and well on his way to dying, stumbles into the football game begging to see Coach Boss, who callously dismisses the bloody and disfigured interruption, it quietly outrages Earl.  When Earl brings his grievance to the police department, the officer being yet another of Coach Boss's former players, regarding Dusty's death from his wounds, it is again brushed off as the riddance of another low-life.  It's not untrue but it is unjust, and it leads Earl Tubb back to his father's tree.

"I ain't you, Daddy.  And this place... ain't never been my home.  These people here... whatever problems thy got... whatever the hell they let happen here... it ain't none a' my damn business."  (19)

He protests, but he's still there, yelling at a tree.  Then fate's own hand intervenes as a bolt of lightning incinerating Bertrand Tubb's tree gravemarker, accomplishing in moments what Earl could not all night with an ax.  No longer standing in his father's metaphorical shadow, Earl is then handed his own destiny.  Like Excalibur in the stone, his own club is burned and splintered from the smoldering stump of his father's tree.  The tool for the worthy man.