BE VERY AFRAID

Just like last year, City Weekly asked me to check out a few of the haunted houses around town and do a little write-up for them. So I did!

Luckily, this year I had company as I went through all four of the bigger ones around SLC. I planned ahead because I didn't want to get stuck with a bunch of teenagers after a high school dance. That was fun once, but I wasn't too interested in trying that again.

My friend Elsha went with me the first night to Castle of Chaos and Strangling Brothers, and the next night I roped my friend Andy (@pangeaspeed) and his GF Melissa (@moldiegoldie) into coming along with me to Nightmare on 13th and Fear Factory. It was pretty fun. I don't get scared at these things anymore, but I still love walking through them. It's fun to see what each one does differently and which ones quietly steal ideas from each other and tweak them a bit so no one really notices (that happens).

I still can't pick a favorite because they all have pros and cons. They're all fun in their own way. If you're bored any time over the next month, the four that I mentioned above are all worth checking out.

If you don't believe me, just check out the article!

Have you checked out any haunted houses this year? What is your favorite part of them?

City Weekly -- There's no better way to get in the spirit of Halloween than wandering through hordes of zombies, deranged clowns and lunatics with power tools while trying to pretend you're not terrified. Haunted house season is upon us, and Utah has its fair share of some of the best in the country.

Read the rest...

BEST OF UTAH

Last week ended on a bit of down note, so let's have some fun this week, shall we?

I'm getting things in order for the Top 5 of 2013 videos, so hopefully those will be up and running before the end of the month, but first, let's talk about the City Weekly Best of Utah awards.

City Weekly is a local weekly newspaper that I occasionally write for. I started out writing comic book reviews back in 2004 and I've done a little bit of everything over the last 10 years. Every year they open a readers poll for some of the best things in Utah and there are a few categories that I'd like to throw my hat in the ring for. I probably won't actually win, but if you want to help boost my ego a little bit, feel free.

Best Local Blog - Why, http://www.trevorhale.com of course.
Best Local on Twitter - @trevorhale, even though I'm only really firing on all cylinders a few times a week.
Best Local Podcast - The Fucking Reserves! Show us some love.
Best Utahn - I don't deserve it at all, but go ahead and throw me in there.
Best Mixologist - I want to be thrown in this category just to fuck with all the bartenders that take it incredibly seriously.

Head over to the City Weekly site, create an account (so people can't vote a thousand times from a single computer) and vote for me for some things. Let's have some fun here.

Also, I've got a bunch of posts half-finished and sitting in the draft folder that I hope to get to this week and next. Keep checking back and I'll make sure there's something here for you worth checking out.

Thanks!

CAME BACK HAUNTED

Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about spending my birthday with a bunch of high school kids? It was pretty fun and turned out to be a pretty good read. That was in the middle of my visiting a bunch of haunted houses for City Weekly's Halloween Issue.

That hit the stands yesterday with articles from a bunch of other, far more talented writers than myself. But I may have gotten the most space, so technically I win. Right?

Either way. If you're out and about this weekend, pick up a copy. It'll feel nice to hold a physical copy of something while you read and it won't look like you're just buried in your phone. Or you can click the link below and read it online. I don't really care how these words travel through your eyes and to your brain, but just make sure they do. I had fun writing this piece, so share it with your friends.

City Weekly -- October in Utah brings all the makings of a perfect fall—cooler weather, leaves changing color, the undead roaming parking lots with chainsaws. The state has many horror houses to choose from; here are some of your best options for a haunted night on the town.

Continue reading Haunted Utah at CityWeekly.net

THRILLS AND CHILLS

For the past few weeks I've been hitting a bunch of haunted houses around the city for an article I was writing for City Weekly. I actually enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected. Once the article goes into the archives I'll have the whole thing up on here. But until then, head over to their site and check it out or grab this week's issue.

City Weekly -- You might think that if you’ve seen one haunted house, you’ve seen them all—but that’s not entirely true. Though there are common themes, no two haunts are exactly the same. Each has its own distinct vision of providing a good, old-fashioned scare.

Read the rest of the article by clicking the link.

Castle of Chaos

Nightmare on 13th

Strangling Brothers

Fear Factory

CASTING COMICS

City Weekly -- Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. After two movies—plus a third one in the works and The Avengers due even sooner—the entire world recognizes that. But that’s not the case in the monthly series Invincible Iron Man. The Tony Stark of that world bears a striking resemblance to Josh Holloway—better known as Sawyer from Lost—and has since Salvador Larroca started drawing writer’s Matt Fraction’s run on the book over three years ago.

And it’s not a coincidence.

Comic-book “casting” has been going on for decades. Artists, after all, have probably the hardest job in comics. They often need something (or someone) to model the characters after in order to get dimensions, body language and facial expressions correct. When C.C. Beck and Bill Parker set out to create an alternative to Superman in the late 1930s, they came up with the character Captain Marvel. Beck stated that the character had been modeled after actor Fred MacMurray, but had been done so carefully. He used the actor’s cleft chin, wavy hair and slanted forehead, but as time went on, Beck rounded out the face to make the comparison less obvious.

Dozens of other characters have been based on popular actors throughout the years, too. John Byrne and Chris Claremont used Orson Welles, Donald Sutherland, Robert Shaw and Diana Rigg as basis for the characters of the Hellfire Club, and Steve Ditko modeled Dr. Strange after horror legend Vincent Price. However, as was the case with Captain Marvel, features were always tweaked during the process.

But while comic-book characters’ resemblance to celebrities has always been part of the process, lately it’s become far less subtle—and much more distracting. Over the past decade, artists have been moving away from using actors as a simple basis to simply using them. Sometimes artists do that for the benefit of consistency, and sometimes it’s purely for publicity. When Mark Millar and J.G. Jones launched Wanted in 2003, the main character, Wesley, looked exactly like Eminem, and The Fox was definitely Halle Berry—there were even a couple of panels in the book that looked just like screenshots from 8 Mile. Millar said the resemblance was because the actors were interested in playing the roles in the upcoming movie adaptation. Of course, the rights to the film hadn’t been sold yet, but it was a clever move by Millar to get the industry talking. It was also a bit of a distraction, because Wanted seemed like it had been created with the sole purpose of being an elaborate film pitch, as opposed to letting it stand on its own as a piece of comic art.

Alex Maleev, currently the artist of the Icon title Scarlet, usually works in the style of photorealistic art and has never been shy about letting the world know that. He hires a model to pose to make his job easier and to give the character a more real feel. With Scarlet, that model even gets recognition on the credit page. The difference is that she’s an unknown. The reader isn’t immediately taken out of the story when they see her because they never have before. That’s much different than when Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato took over Thunderbolts and Norman Osborne suddenly looked exactly like Tommy Lee Jones.

To some that doesn’t matter, and to others it’s so distracting that it ruins a potentially great story. At times, it also seems like the artist is taking the easy way out of the situation by using a specific actor. Sure, it’s hard keeping up with the pressures of meeting a monthly schedule, but that’s part of the game. It just feels like the shelf life of a trade (or hardcover) would be longer if the first thought that came to mind when flipping through was, “Oh, this was a great Iron Man story,” as opposed to “Wait, why does Tony Stark all of the sudden look like the guy from Lost?”

EVENT FATIGUE

Wrote this a little bit ago but it just showed up last week.

City Weekly -- Comics publishers trot out still more universe-changing —and wallet-lightening—plot developments.

Big, company-wide event comics have long been a standard of the industry. From Crisis on Infinite Earths to the original Secret Wars, DC and Marvel have always tried to stir things up, make their stories more exciting and maybe breathe a little life into flailing titles. But over the past few years, the two big companies have been lodged in a battle to constantly one-up each other by making the events bigger in scope and widening their sweep over the respective universes. This is the kind of thing that’s taking its toll on the casual reader and bringing on a serious case of event fatigue.

DC is kicking things off a little earlier than usual by releasing not one, but two big events this year. War of the Green Lanterns (pictured) begins in March and picks up threads that were planted in last year’s Blackest Night event. War is being relegated to only Green Lantern titles, but that means if you only read one Green Lantern title a month (as opposed to all of them), you’ll need to start paying attention to the others to keep up on what’s going on. This is also a bit of an extra push, since the Green Lantern movie opens in theaters this summer.

While the smaller Green Lantern event is going on in one corner of the DC Universe, writer Geoff Johns will also head up the much-bigger-in-scope Flashpoint, beginning in May. While Flashpoint itself is only a five-issue series, there are an additional 15 3-issue miniseries that will flesh out the story that begins in the main event. And if you don’t want to miss anything, it won’t come cheap. Even if DC holds the line at a $2.99 price point, the Flashpoint tie-in series alone will cost you an additional $45 a month on top of whatever you’re spending on your regular monthly comics anyway. That’s not even counting the mini itself, or the already monthly Flash title that will surely be affected. For a die-hard fan, that’s not too bad—but it’s a sure-fire way to scare off the casual reader.

Marvel isn’t an innocent bystander in this type of marketing, either. They’ll be trotting out the seven-issue Fear Itself series this spring, complete with a prologue issue and several tie-in series, as well. Historically, Marvel has been a little better at making their events relatively stand-alone, so you can read only the main title and won’t miss much else by avoiding the tie-ins. DC, on the other hand, has been known to throw out enormous plot points in one series and finish them in another, irritating some fans who are already weary of how much money they spend a month on comics.

For some, it’s easier (and cheaper) to avoid all of these problems by simply skipping the event books and catching up online. Comic book sites and message boards are notorious for spoiler-heavy reviews and discussions that may not be as fun, but at least you won’t be bogged down with extra homework to make the most of the one book you actually want. If one were to go that route, but still wanted their fix of capes and masks, this would be the perfect opportunity to check out some of the smaller, independent superhero books on the shelf. Invincible might be the best of them all over the past few years, so why not take a break from the mainstream and help out the little guys, instead?

Every writer probably dreams of the day he’s given the keys to an entire universe to have his way—and if the idea is good, more power to him. But for those who are tired of the promise that “nothing will ever be the same again,” only for it to be almost exactly the same a few short months later, these big events are sometimes just another distracting side effect of otherwise great serialized storytelling.

LESSONS LEARNED

Working with publication word restraints is hard to do so I wasn't able to fit everything I wanted to say in this article. But I also like it because it forces me to find concise ways to say what I want without it feeling bloated and going off on endless side notes—like I do here sometimes.

City Weekly -- Another year gone and another box full of comics packed away. Before we move to 2011, there are a few things I noticed, something I want to admit and one thing I feel I need to gloat about.

I was wrong: The first comic book I ever reviewed was Robert Kirkman’s apocalyptic zombie story The Walking Dead, back when it first debuted in 2004. I gave the first six issues an honest chance, but it just didn’t click. Kirkman’s writing felt stilted, none of the characters resonated and it just felt too soap-opera-y. As this fall’s AMC TV adaptation came closer, I decided to give it another chance. About four issues after I’d given up originally, Kirkman went nuts and managed to produce one of the best books of the past decade. I tore through the first 50 issues in three days and haven’t been able to get enough since. It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong—and this time I clearly was.

I told you so: I’ve been saying Jonathan Hickman has big things ahead of him since The Nightly News popped up in 2007, and everyone else has taken notice now, too. He’s been working his way up the ladder at Marvel with a mini-series here and there and a solid ongoing project with Secret Warriors, but he surprised mainstream readers this year taking over Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four. And with S.H.I.E.L.D.—his take on the secret history of the Marvel Universe pitting Leonardo da Vinci against Isaac Newton—Hickman got a chance to flex some of the unique storytelling muscles and wild ideas he showed off to such praise on his indie books.

Best job of driving me away: Usually you can count on Mark Millar. The Authority, Superman: Red Son and Old Man Logan are all examples of top-notch storytelling. But lately, everything he does has some sort of gimmick, and he’s unable to simply let the story speak for itself. Instead of a simple title and byline, it’s become Mark Millar Presents the Greatest Comic Ever Written! I still enjoy his work-for-hire stuff at Marvel, but all of his creator-owned titles this year have left me cold and longing for the days when he was still trying to prove his worth instead of proclaiming he’s the second coming of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko combined.

Best job of pulling me back in: There was a two-year period where I didn’t read a single DC Universe book. Nothing made sense, the books were always switching artists mid-story and they were trotting out characters who hadn’t been used in 40 years and pretending it was a huge comeback. But with Grant Morrison in charge of the Batman universe (and Geoff Johns on Green Lantern and The Flash), I’ve been slowly pulled back in. All the little things he said would eventually be tied together have been taking shape, and his stories still feel fresh and exciting. There are still numerous DC characters I couldn’t care less about—and I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before Morrison finds a way to get me with those, too.

Best comeback: As someone who’s seen his fair share of disappointing reunion shows over the past few years, I know for a fact that getting the band back together doesn’t always work. That’s why I was so nervous when Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan announced they were revisiting their phenomenal 2003 series, Demo. Those 12 issues stand as one of my favorite comic runs of all time, and for my own selfish reasons, I didn’t want to see that memory tainted. I should have known better than to doubt because Demo picked right back up without skipping a beat. The new characters felt a little more mature, and Wood and Cloonan—so much more comfortable in their professional relationship now—produced six of the best single issues of the year.

BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT

City Weekly -- In a perfect world, Wiseguys would be packed every night with people enjoying one of the more difficult brands of performance art. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
The live comedy market isn’t what it once was, and today people would rather spend their Friday night home catching up with Jersey Shore repeats on On Demand.

Friday night at Wiseguys in West Valley was no exception, and comedian Bobcat Goldthwait took the stage in front of exactly 31 people. Goldthwait was obviously disappointed with the turnout for the late show--he’d played an earlier set that night also--and claimed it was the smallest crowd he’d ever performed in front of. He made a couple of quick jokes about it, as did both openers and the house MC, and then decided that since there were only a few people there, he’d buy pizza for the entire crowd. He pulled out his cell phone and called Domino’s, ordered eight pizzas and used the delivery quote time as a timer of sorts for his act. Listening to him try to explain the situation--and who he was--to the girl on the other end of the phone was priceless.

He went through his act, but it was tough for him (or any comedian that night) to get into a rhythm, because some of the punchlines would elicit only a mild chuckle--or worse, not work at all. His set was a mixture of self-deprecating humor about his former career as the weird-voiced screamer from Police Academy, dated (yet still pretty funny) jokes about Michael Jackson’s funeral and some downright hilarious stories, most of which would have gone over like gangbusters in front of a bigger crowd. Goldthwait took a couple jabs at local comedian Marcus, whom he clearly doesn’t care for, and had some great interaction with a few people in the crowd. By the time the pizza showed up, Goldthwait was working his closing anecdote, which would have been a great way to end on a high note; unfortunately it fell a little flat. A few people had already checked out, and were just waiting for the free pizza. It was a shame, too. The closer was definitely one of the set highlights. Too bad there wasn’t much of a crowd there to make it work as well as it should have.

Local comedians Rodney Norman and Jacob Leigh opened the show and did as good of job as they could getting the small crowd warmed up. Norman is a Wiseguys regular, and has opened for a lot of the bigger shows that come through. His routine is very laid-back and filled with quiet jokes that were a nice contrast to Goldthwait's booming personality. Jacob Leigh is another local who seems to still be trying to find his voice. He had some funny stuff, but was bouncing around from bit to bit a little too quickly. He’s got potential, though, and is definitely not afraid of working a tough, small crowd, so you’ve got to give him credit for that.

It was no easy feat for anyone performing that night, but all three of them gave it their best stuff and tried to have fun and that’s all that matters on a night like that. Everyone in the audience appreciated it—all 31 of us.

COMIC BYTES

City Weekly -- I love comics. I love the way that a good writer can take his time crafting a long-form story combining subtext, bold ideas and Batman fighting the Joker. I love the habit of going to the comic shop every Wednesday, and I love reading stories written by someone who loves comics as much as I do.

It’s not a perfect relationship, though. There is one giant aspect that I don’t love, and it may be sacrilegious as a fan to say it, but: I hate collecting comics. I have nearly 30 boxes that need to come with me every time I move—which means nearly 4,000 comics sitting in my house taking up space. Some of them, I’ll pull out and read again someday; many more, I won’t. That’s the part I hate.

It’s the conundrum that most comic fans find themselves in when it comes to talking about the rise of digital comics and the potential downfall of the old collector paradigm. With the release of the iPad earlier this year, comic-book publishers took a big step toward the future of their industry. All the major companies have now developed the beloved “app” for their comics, and slowly started releasing parts of their back-issue catalog. The majority of what’s available are older books, chosen to give newcomers the chance to play catch-up for a cheaper price and get them into shops to buy the print version of new issues.

All of the books in the DC App’s “new” category are at least two years old, as are the majority of Marvel titles. Having worked with retailers and distribution companies for the better part of their existence, the Big Two are showing loyalty to the old guard and don’t want to offend them by helping to establish new competition. The memory of what happened to mom-and-pop music stores when digital music and file-sharing exploded before anyone knew what hit them is still fresh in everyone’s mind. No one wants to see the same thing happen to this industry, because the vast majority of comic shops across the country are locally owned.

That means that adapting to the changing technology is going to be a slow process. You’ll still be able to find torrents of downloads of new issues online, but usually those are just copies that someone scanned and made into a PDF. With the books downloaded from the official company app, however, the quality is much better—on the iPad especially. Readers can zoom in on individual panels, and everything has been adjusted to remain as clear as possible. Plus, compensation for the creators is usually there, too. You’re getting a better-quality product, and no one suffers financially.

Marvel and smaller distributor IDW have been taking steps to ensure they are at the forefront of digital comics by adding recently released books to their App store. IDW announced that each title it publishes will be available digitally for only one month after the initial print date. Marvel has offered up a few books simultaneously with the printed shipping date, but as was the case with the Iron Man Annual, it was split into three separate chapters that cost $1.99 each; the print version was available all at once for $4.99. Rather than dive in head first, everyone seems to be testing the water a little bit at a time.

As with most new things, there are downsides to digital comics. You can’t really share your comics without giving someone your entire iPad (or similar device in the near future), which no one wants to do; there’s also the inevitable rise of quality comics being illegally shared, hurting the entire industry. And there are still going to be those who say you’re not a real comics fan without a basement full of longboxes. But those vanishing comics just leave more room for a growing collection of action figures, statues and convention exclusives.

JET SET

City Weekly -- Cliff Secord got off to a rocky start.

In 1981, Steve Schanes—publisher of Pacific Comics—approached Dave Stevens about filling the back six pages of an upcoming book. He asked Stevens for two installments, giving him free reign to do whatever he wanted. Stevens sent a promo drawing of a retro, 1930s pulp hero called The Rocketeer. Schanes loved it and wrote back telling Stevens he couldn’t wait to see the story.

Unfortunately, Stevens didn’t actually have one.

When he was finally able to break the story—and The Rocketeer was published—it was an immediate hit. Cliff Secord, a stunt pilot in Los Angeles in 1938, discovered a mysterious jet pack that enabled him to fly. In an effort to impress his girlfriend and make a little bit of money, Cliff becomes something of a reluctant hero. Cliff’s laid-back personality, the difficulty of being a hero and Stewart’s character-driven story set The Rocketeer apart from most of the other popular comics of the time.

The problem though, was that the published stories kept jumping around from place to place, making them somewhat hard to follow. The first two installments appeared in a book called Starslayer; two more were published in Pacific Presents; and the conclusion, Rocket’s Red Glare, was released by Eclipse comics in 1984. A collected edition followed, but that was it for The Rocketeer until 1988, when Comico Comics released two issues of a story called Cliff’s New York Adventure in Rocketeer Adventure Magazine. Unfortunately, Comico ran into financial trouble, and the third and final installment wasn’t seen until Dark Horse released it in 1995.

The title was popular enough that it was made into a movie in 1991, but even though it was discussed, Stevens never returned for another series. He kept working as an illustrator and painter, but never made it back to serialized storytelling, and died in early 2008 after several years battling leukemia. Fortunately, with the assistance of some of the industry’s top talent, Stevens had been working on a massive project that would see each installment of The Rocketeer collected in one place for the first time.

IDW released two versions of The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures in December 2009. The first was a standard hardcover with both stories re-colored by Eagle, Harvey and Eisner award-winning colorist Laura Martin. The second version was an oversize hardcover that contained both stories as well as nearly 200 pages of bonus material.

The bonus material in the deluxe edition is worth the admission price alone. It contains sketches, layouts, script excerpts, story outlines and just about anything else that Dave Stevens may have had lying around his house. He had managed to hold on to nearly every page of original art and the majority of it went in. There’s even a running DVD-style commentary from Stevens and a few other artists who assisted him throughout the years. The best bits are when Stevens writes that the layouts and breakdowns are his favorite part of creating a comic, but “what is pure, deadly drudgery is the detail and precision of penciling and inking.” It’s no wonder he had no interest in going back to the series.

Stevens even admits that he “wrote and drew it a page at a time. I’d just sit down and start page one with no idea where I was going!” It’s those kinds of comments, littered throughout the book, that give you an insight into how Stevens approached the whole thing. He made comics because they were fun, plain and simple. And that embodies the attitude and the spirit of The Rocketeer.

While he may not have lived long enough to see the finished product, The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures is everything Stevens could have hoped it would be. And now the rest of us can sit back and enjoy the adventure.

GRAPHIC DESIGNS

City Weekly -- Comics and graphic novels—even obscure ones—become perfect movie fodder.

In the early 1990s, Joe Eszterhas scribbled a movie concept on a cocktail napkin and sold it for millions of dollars. It was the heyday of the “spec script” era in Hollywood, and suddenly, everyone was a screenwriter. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on whom you ask—that era didn’t survive all the bad movies that came out of two-sentence ideas, and studios were once again looking elsewhere for new properties.
Hollywood is almost completely out of ideas. That became apparent when studios started optioning anything from board games to yet-to-be-published children’s books. Eventually, someone ended up in the indie section of a comic shop and a light bulb went off. Comics seemed like the perfect fodder for films and were far less expensive to acquire.

The average moviegoer probably would be surprised to learn some of the movies that have been based on comics or graphic novels. We’re not talking about huge box office hits like Iron Man or The Dark Knight, because those will always be around. Thankfully, most have gotten better than Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher, though there are misfires every once in a while (like Thomas Jane’s Punisher or Ray Stevenson’s Punisher: War Zone).

Well-received movies like David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World were originally graphic novels. Those films were relatively low-budget affairs, but studios will fork out the cash if they see a project able to go the distance. Max Allan Collins’ Road To Perdition attracted Sam Mendes (American Beauty), Tom Hanks and Paul Newman; Universal’s upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a manga-style book from Oni Press, got Michael Cera and director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz); Warner Bros.’ The Losers (April 23) attracted Zoe Saldana, Jeffery Dean Morgan and Chris Evans.

Graphic-lit adaptations also are easily digestible for movie studios during a struggling economy. Instead of taking chances on spec scripts pitched or written by unknown writers that may need to be heavily rewritten or developed further, comics provide a solid, complete story right away. Since comics are, at their basic level, nothing more than words and pictures, the entire book moves along like a rough storyboard for a film. Screenwriters, producers and directors know exactly what they’re getting. They are able to make changes here and there, but the story is ready from the start.

The variety of comics is just as vast as literary novels, and not every comic is about a superhero with a secret identity. There’s something for everyone, no matter the taste.

Comics haven’t replaced the novel as the primary form of movie fodder nor will they. Comic books are usually shorter and more to the point than novels, which tend to run upward of 200 pages—and in a nation of ever-decreasing attention spans, that helps. And sometimes, comics just seem a little more fun. Big-name stars have gravitated to more entertaining and less conventional projects lately. Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s three-issue series, Red, topped out at just over 60 pages and is in production right now with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman starring.

These adaptations have been a great thing for the comic industry because it gets more new readers into local shops, and the writers of these books are getting more and more work—both in comics and Hollywood. Mark Millar, based solely on Wanted and the buzz that Kick-Ass has generated, is already moving from writing comics to directing film (although judging from Frank Miller and The Spirit, this might not be the best idea). Brian Michael Bendis teamed up with Zac Efron to finally get his graphic novel Fire off the ground, and Matt Fraction has been on the set helping out with Iron Man 2.

Writers may not be leaving comics for million-dollar paychecks—yet—but they’re not running around town pitching Showgirls, either.

NO RESERVATIONS - SCALPED REVIEW

From City Weekly -- The world is a terrible place full of bad people—and Vertigo Comics wants to keep it that way. In its nearly two-decade existence, Vertigo has given readers the epic — and sometimes disturbing — tales of Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Y: The Last Man and 100 Bullets. Sadly, all of them have ended, leaving a gaping hole where those flagship titles used to be. Luckily for everyone who reads comics, though, Scalped has stepped up to claim its rightful place at the top.

A crime comic through and through, Scalped focuses on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and the down-and-out characters who are doomed to a life of drugs, abuse and ridicule. Dashiell Bad Horse escaped the downtrodden life of “the rez” years ago but finds himself right back in the thick of things again—only, this time, with a whole new perspective. Bad Horse is an undercover FBI agent gathering information on the chief of the Oglala tribe, Lincoln Red Crow. Red Crow is the head of the police force on the reservation and also a wealthy mob boss. He’s under investigation for his involvement in the murder of two federal agents in the ’70s, when Red Crow was a militant Indian American activist alongside Bad Horse’s mother, Gina. Bad Horse is tasked with infiltrating Red Crow’s crew to help build a case against him. Of course, as with every great crime story, things are never that easy, and for every minor victory notched, a crushing defeat isn’t far behind.

Taking inspiration from the true story of imprisoned American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, Jason Aaron takes this story down one dark alley after another. Corruption, greed and loyalty all come into play, giving the story a film-noir feel with Indian casinos, badlands and meth labs standing in for the traditional noir staples of seedy bars and big cities. Artist R.M. Guera embodies the dark tone of Aaron’s writing to the fullest extent, giving everything a dirty, gritty feel. The colors are washed-out and shadows loom in nearly every panel. Even when the story takes place during the day, it still looks as if the sun isn’t quite bright enough to get anyone out of the darkness.

While the story focuses on mostly bad things on the reservation, Aaron and Guera find ways to illuminate the quiet moments that make any good story compelling. The heartbreak and tragedy that most of these characters experience is realized through the powerful storytelling of these two relative newcomers. As long as they keep shining that light on the dim corners of Prairie Rose, Scalped will be welcomed among the Vertigo pantheon.

SCALPED
By Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera
Vertigo

InBrief
Die Hard: Year One
Finally, the origin story that no one asked for! Ever wonder what life was like for John McClane in New York City years before the incident at Nakatomi Plaza? I sure didn’t—and I’m probably not alone. The involvement of veteran writer Howard Chaykin made this an interesting project, but the reasoning behind it makes no sense. It seems as if Chaykin had a ’70s cop story ready to go and simply changed his protagonists name to McClane when the opportunity presented itself. It’s good they didn’t try to shoehorn in a silly origin of “yippie ki-yay” but there are still a few issues to go. (Howard Chaykin & Stephen Thompson; BOOM studios)

Ignition City
The idea of “retro future” isn’t a new one, but Warren Ellis finds full potential in Ignition City. It’s 1956, and personal space travel has become commonplace after World War II was interrupted by a Martian invasion. Taking influence from Buck Rogers and Deadwood, Ellis throws a good old-fashioned whodunit mystery into a setting where unregistered laser pistols and broken-down space ships are normal. Originally projected as an ongoing series, it was cut to a mere five issues, and it would be a shame if that’s all we’ll get. There’s too much great stuff to not expand on it further. (Warren Ellis & Gianluca Pagliarani; Avatar.)

FOUND THIS TODAY

I wrote an article on touring for City Weekly last year, and just ran across it today.

Check it out.