by Lewis Ryan
What you have before you, dear reader is the first in an ongoing series of spotlights on various brand new indie titles. With so many new series starting every month it’s sometimes difficult (and costly) to keep track of them all so the aim here is to do some of the grunt work for you, breaking those rocks, finding those gems. With that in mind, I proudly present the first Indie Fiction Triple Feature!
What you have before you, dear reader is the first in an ongoing series of spotlights on various brand new indie titles. With so many new series starting every month it’s sometimes difficult (and costly) to keep track of them all so the aim here is to do some of the grunt work for you, breaking those rocks, finding those gems. With that in mind, I proudly present the first Indie Fiction Triple Feature!
The Saviors #1
Writer – James Robinson // Artist – J. Bone
The scene opens on Tomas Ramirez, poster boy for stoner-existentialism. Tommy is quite content with his lifestyle, pumping gas and smoking weed. That is until he finds something mysterious happening in his town.
J. Bone’s art style is simple but effective and there is no colour so the book really relies more heavily on content to set a tone.
James Robinson (Starman, JLA) skillfully uses dynamics in the density of his dialogue to paint his landscape, firstly insulating the reader within Tommy’s world with his long-winded musings on life, then isolating Tommy and his reader with wordless panels portraying various elements of the town. The eleven page chase scene containing no more than eight words really changes the pace of the comic and provides a stark juxtaposition to the dusty philosophy we’re lulled into expecting. By forcing the reader into a slow pace for so long, not dissimilar to Tomas in his quiet country town, and then jamming the page turning into overdrive, Robinson uses the format expertly so that experience mirrors content.
The only criticism I have of this work is that the slow burn really is a drag. Eight pages to introduce the protagonist seemed a little ham-fisted on first read and I almost put the book down. I’m glad I didn’t though, as it eventually played into the larger picture in terms of the pacing of a book I will definitely be picking up again next month.
Writer – James Robinson // Artist – J. Bone
The scene opens on Tomas Ramirez, poster boy for stoner-existentialism. Tommy is quite content with his lifestyle, pumping gas and smoking weed. That is until he finds something mysterious happening in his town.
J. Bone’s art style is simple but effective and there is no colour so the book really relies more heavily on content to set a tone.
James Robinson (Starman, JLA) skillfully uses dynamics in the density of his dialogue to paint his landscape, firstly insulating the reader within Tommy’s world with his long-winded musings on life, then isolating Tommy and his reader with wordless panels portraying various elements of the town. The eleven page chase scene containing no more than eight words really changes the pace of the comic and provides a stark juxtaposition to the dusty philosophy we’re lulled into expecting. By forcing the reader into a slow pace for so long, not dissimilar to Tomas in his quiet country town, and then jamming the page turning into overdrive, Robinson uses the format expertly so that experience mirrors content.
The only criticism I have of this work is that the slow burn really is a drag. Eight pages to introduce the protagonist seemed a little ham-fisted on first read and I almost put the book down. I’m glad I didn’t though, as it eventually played into the larger picture in terms of the pacing of a book I will definitely be picking up again next month.
EGOs – Earth/Galactic Operatives #1
Writer – Stuart Moore // Art - Gus Storms
First off… Earth/Galactic Operatives? Way to shoehorn an acronym. Who do you think you are, S.H.I.E.L.D.? Surely the sensible (and commonly used throughout the book) EarthGov Operatives would have been more apropos.
Anyway, EGOs opens with a bang. If Saviors channels Clerks, then EGOs is positively Pulp Fiction by comparison. With action kicking off from the very first page, it crash-lands you in the middle of an alien planet and then douses the reader in story the whole way. There are several curious choices along the way, the first being the somewhat juvenile voice of the narrator, but these are mostly explained throughout the issue in clever twists and turns. There are great Sci-Fi concepts here, in fact I would say it’s one of the more interesting forays into the genre that I’ve come across in recent times but it does suffer from that most-persistent of foibles; the plot hole. There are glaring inconsistencies that rear their heads, which for the sake of spoilers I will not detail. However, if that’s the sort of thing you can look past there is a lot of enjoyment to be gained from this story.
Writer – Stuart Moore // Art - Gus Storms
First off… Earth/Galactic Operatives? Way to shoehorn an acronym. Who do you think you are, S.H.I.E.L.D.? Surely the sensible (and commonly used throughout the book) EarthGov Operatives would have been more apropos.
Anyway, EGOs opens with a bang. If Saviors channels Clerks, then EGOs is positively Pulp Fiction by comparison. With action kicking off from the very first page, it crash-lands you in the middle of an alien planet and then douses the reader in story the whole way. There are several curious choices along the way, the first being the somewhat juvenile voice of the narrator, but these are mostly explained throughout the issue in clever twists and turns. There are great Sci-Fi concepts here, in fact I would say it’s one of the more interesting forays into the genre that I’ve come across in recent times but it does suffer from that most-persistent of foibles; the plot hole. There are glaring inconsistencies that rear their heads, which for the sake of spoilers I will not detail. However, if that’s the sort of thing you can look past there is a lot of enjoyment to be gained from this story.
Badass #1
Writer - Herik Hanna // Art – Bruno Bessadi
Badass is sort of what you’d expect from the title. It’s violent and funny. Unfortunately, the book has no moral code. The protagonist, Jack, kills and maims a café full of civilians as a vehicle to portray the levels of his seething misanthropy. The problem is, it speaks nothing to his motivation. He is placated just one page earlier by a child’s pain and a mother’s misplaced aggression. Why blow the place up on a whim?
Next scene, he wipes out a den of his co-criminals again with no real mention of his motivation. Unfortunately, violence for the sake of violence is never really going to make a good story.
There are some great one-liners while Jack’s cracking wise and the artwork is very detailed and super genre appropriate but they do little to salvage what really is a train wreck of a book.
So that’s it for the first Indie Fiction Triple Feature. In summation, read The Saviors and probably skip the other two. I’ll be back next time with more indie #1s. Until then, may the comic gods smile down on you and yours.
Writer - Herik Hanna // Art – Bruno Bessadi
Badass is sort of what you’d expect from the title. It’s violent and funny. Unfortunately, the book has no moral code. The protagonist, Jack, kills and maims a café full of civilians as a vehicle to portray the levels of his seething misanthropy. The problem is, it speaks nothing to his motivation. He is placated just one page earlier by a child’s pain and a mother’s misplaced aggression. Why blow the place up on a whim?
Next scene, he wipes out a den of his co-criminals again with no real mention of his motivation. Unfortunately, violence for the sake of violence is never really going to make a good story.
There are some great one-liners while Jack’s cracking wise and the artwork is very detailed and super genre appropriate but they do little to salvage what really is a train wreck of a book.
So that’s it for the first Indie Fiction Triple Feature. In summation, read The Saviors and probably skip the other two. I’ll be back next time with more indie #1s. Until then, may the comic gods smile down on you and yours.
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