Review: El Diablo: The Haunted Horseman

I have recently been reorganizing my massive comics midden, a long overdue task forced upon me by a break-in, during which the would-be burglars dumped all of my long-boxes out in the middle of the room and rifled through the resulting pile, apparently convinced I had hidden $100 bills between random bagged-and-boarded comics (I don't think they stole any comics; I recently discovered that I seem to be missing my entire run of JSA and Justice Society of America, but I'm not sure if the box containing them was stolen in a previous break-in at a previous apartment, where I also lost all of my Robin, Batgirl and Nightwing comics, or if it was just lost in a move).

It's precisely because I have ever-so-gradually been going through every comic book I've ever bought that I know I never finished Jai Nitz, Phil Hester and Ande Parks' 2008 miniseries El Diablo. In fact, I seem to have given up on it after the second issue (Unless I did buy and read all six issues, and the thieves decided to just steal the last four issues of the series).

I became newly curious about that series and that creation upon seeing this year's Suicide Squad film, which prominently featured a version of the Nitz/Hester/Parks iteration of El Diablo in the cast, presumably because the post-Flashpoint "New 52" revival of Suicide Squad did so. I was able to track down a copy of the 2009 collection of the series, El Diablo: The Haunted Horseman, through the library, although it doesn't look like it is currently in print. That is unfortunate (as I imagine others might suddenly be interested in the character thanks to the movie as well), but also understandable (The New 52 version, and the one in the film, vary quite considerably from the one Nitz and company presented in their series).

Rereading the early chapters, I was reminded fairly instantly of two elements of the book I didn't care for.

Nitz picked up on the retconned version of the original El Diablo, a cowboy character created by Robert Kanigher and Gray Morrow, which had reimagined him as being a literally diabolical, supernatural character. In this series, that El Diablo, Lazarus Lane, appears as Rip Van Winkle-looking coma patient kept alive by his curse. At one point he shares his hospital room with the paralyzed prisoner Chato Santana, passing on his curse and making Chato the new El Diablo, "Hell's hitman." What does that entail? Well, he would transform into the guy you see on the cover, with super-strength, a degree of invulnerability and the ability to walk again. He gets a flaming whip and an enchanted pistol from cowboy times that fired brimstone bullets only capable of striking sinners (they would dissolve in the air if fired at the innocent). He also had access to the magic ghost horse that Lane used to ride.

Not a bad suite of supernatural powers, although the face resembling a skull and the flaming whip were pretty reminiscent of the actual skull face and the flaming chains of Marvel's Ghost Rider, as was the mission passed down from a cowboy era spirit of vengeance and El Diablo's specific remit: He was to kill evil men with his supernatural powers, consigning their souls to hell.

The Ghost Rider-iness was particularly strongly felt in 2008, as the Ghost Rider film was released in the previous year.

The other aspect was that grated with me at the time was that El Diablo III here was basically created to do the very same job that The Spectre and Ragman held. How many spirits of vengeance did the DCU need running around killing bad guys? Weren't theyse guys eventually going to get their capes all tangled up at some point? (Looking back, the last Spectre ongoing, the one starring the then-dead Hal Jordan, was cancelled in 2003; by this point, Crispus Allen was the host of the Specre, but, like Ragman, he didn't have his own series.)

Anyway, that was eight years ago. How does it read now?

Remarkably well. I was particularly impressed by the Hester and Parks art, which, were it published by today's DC Comics, would look particularly weird and unusual, as the publisher's range of art styles has gone through a couple rounds of contractions towards a house style and expansion away from that house style, but the contractions have always been more dramatic than the expansions.

In addition to being completely solid on the fundamentals of storytelling–sadly, no longer even a given for books from the two major direct market publishers–Hester and Parks offered thick, chunky figures on a relatively flat plane, in a highly individual style that couldn't really be mistaken for anyone else's. At least I have never seen a piece of Hester's art and thought it was anyone else's, nor have I ever seen anyone else's art and wondered if it might be Hester's (Nor have I ever heard anyone else mistake his work for anyone else's, or anyone else's work for his).

The design of the title character is, in passing, familiar to that of the version in The New 52 and the Suicide Squad film, mainly from the neck up, but not so much in context. Chato is a bald, built, Mexican man living in L.A., and when becoming El Diablo his skin turns ghost white and the markings of a skull appear, while he's clothed in garb that's vaguely cowboy-like (poncho, gloves, boots). The current conception of Chato is a more wiry figure, heavily tattooed (In the film, he's like ten times more heavily tattooed than the rather heavily tattooed Joker and Harley), and he has pyro-kinetic powers, given to him by a vague-ish source.

Chato is a fairly smart and fairly ruthless gangster with a heart if not gold, then at least at least of some valuable metal–he's not a 100% total bastard, but he is a real bastard. This being the DCU, his criminal empire involves more than just the usual, real-life criminal activities and, at the book's opening, he's in the midst of purchasing some high-tech laser guns from the HIVE. When the deal goes bad and the police try to bust it up, Chato's betrayed by his lieutenant and ends up getting shot and paralyzed.

He refuses to give up any information at all to the law, no matter what they do to him or offer him–including an experimental procedure to fix his legs–but his old gang comes for him anyway, and he's only saved by taking on El Diablo's curse.

Once empowered, he goes through a bit of training with Lane in which he learns more about his powers and their limitations, while going after various targets of vengeance assigned to him, and the one he wants, the guy who betrayed him.

Meanwhile, he gets mixed up in a DCU superhero-like plot involving an alliance of several villain agencies that mainly serve as Easter Eggs for long-time fans, gets his first villain in a sword-handed guy named Vorpal and discovers the origins of the curse, which goes back to prehistoric mythology and leads to a climax for the fate of the world (Spoiler: El Diablo saves the world).

Of particular interest is his encounter with "Brave New World"-Era Freedom Fighters, a battle which climaxes in Mexican-American drug dealer Chato Santana literally duking it out with the Spirit of America, arguing over who has more blood on their hands and who better represents the American dream. It's the kind of scene that could only occur in a superhero comic, as no matter how fraught with symbolism or commentary the scene might be, it's also perfectly natural, because Uncle Sam rubs shoulders with the other characters of the DCU. (I was actually pretty surprised by the presence of Invunche, those particularly disturbing monsters from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, if only because such direct references to events from Swamp Thing would have been a little unusual then; Hester and Parks' versions manage to be creepy without being as completely terrifying as the more detailed version drawn by Rick Veitch).

While I had no interest in the character in 2008, and apparently not many other comics readers did either, based on El Diablo's vertual disappearance until 2011's Suicide Squad, now I can't help but wish this was the version that was still running around. As derivative as many elements of the character are, he's visually much more compelling (and easier to draw; New 52 El Diablo suffers from wandering, ever-changing tattoos) and has a much more interesting back story and status quo than "former gangsters who shoots fire out of his hands."

Also, I really like scary horses in my comic books.

I wonder if this version could have worked in the Suicide Squad, movie or comic book, though, given what we're told of the curse. Like, I'm not sure how Amanda Waller would keep this guy from killing his teammates and everyone else in Belle Reve, like, immediately.

I know Nitz has been given the opportunity to revisit his creation in DC's post-movie Suicide Squad's Most Wanted series. I read a few chapters of the El Diablo story, and I'm afraid they didn't do much of anything for me, mostly because of how poor the art was. I'm interested in re-reading them now though, having just completed this series.

Review: Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters Vol. 1

This is the third trade collection of an IDW Godzilla series I've tried, and, like the others I've tried, it has an extremely interesting, "Hey, I'd like to see what those guys would do with Godzilla and friends!" creative team involved, and it featured not just the title character, but several other Toho Studios monsters (In this volume, we see Anguirus, Rodan and Battra, with Mothra foreshadowed—and appearing on a variant cover. Kumonga and King Ghidorah also make variant cover-only appearances).

I think that speaks quite well to the fact that IDW was pursuing a smart strategy of putting together strong creative teams by creators who weren't the most obvious of choices of giant monster comics, and it speaks to how aggressively—too aggressively?—the publisher was seeking to exploit the license. This title, for example, is completely unrelated to the other two I read (Godzilla: The Half-Century War and just plain Godzilla). It's so different, in both its look and conception, I think its existence is justified, but it does make coming to the franchise a little late (even just wait-for-the-trade late) difficult.

The team on this particular book, which Wikipedia reminds me was IDW's original Godzilla offering and was a 12-issue series that has since been completely collected, consists of co-writer Eric Powell, best-known as the writer/artist for his Dark Horse series The Goon (and, now that I think of it, some pretty swell Marvel monster comics), pencil artist Phil Hester, probably best known for his collaborations with writer Kevin Smith (Green Arrow for DC, Clerks: The Lost Scene for Oni) or the short-lived Marvel series The Irredeemable Ant-Man. Powell's co-writer is Tracy March, and Hester is inked by a Bruce McCorkindale (And while Powell's just writing this series, he does provide some of the many covers as well, for Powell fans who want to see how the writer-who-is-also-an-artist draws Godzilla and some of his frenemies; we'll look at some covers near the bottom of this post).

This story is set in modern times, and, unlike the Swierczynski series, in which Godzilla has been a fact of life for a while, this is apparently the first appearance of any giant monsters on Earth. The big guy appears in a weird opening scene in which two little Japanese kids play on a beach, when they suddenly notice the gigantic tail of a diving...something. Godzilla appears next on a two page spread, SKREEEEE-ONK-ing as he eats the children in a huge mouthful of sand, like some sort of gigantic organic steam shovel surfacing through the beach itself.

The Japanese try to missile the monster to death to no effect...

...and when he gets out to sea, the U.S. tries a sub-launched nuclear missile, which only has the result of making Godzilla grow larger and start breathing his blue radioactive fire (not the traditional orange fire that Alex Ross has him breathing on the cover there).

The first issue/chapter ends with President Obama seeing the news, and reacting the same way his Japanese counterpart did upon learning that the nuke only made Godzilla stronger and gave him a new weapon.

"You have to be @%$#ing kidding me" is to Kingdom of Monsters as "I've got a bad feeling about this" is to Star Wars, apparently.

Meanwhile, weird shit is happening all around the world, like cattle, crows and swarms of cicadas suddenly dropping dead out of the world. Second monster Anguirus emerging from the ground in Texas, and running, jumping and rolling its way toward the U.S. border. In Russia, a little boy nicks a museum piece during an earthquake, and out of it hatches a baby pterodactyl, which grows into Rodan in the space of a bout a day.

Meanwhile, an enormous Mothra-like egg is discovered in France, and two mute but enormously powerful psychic school girls find it, and control the monstrous larva that emerges, whom they name Battra.

The worst news of all, however, is that when Godzilla's through with Japan, he heads to the U.S., and he and Anguirus or on a collision course in Los Angeles.

What's different about this book is the focus on the human characters, and the fact that there are so many human characters, all around the world. Many look and sound familiar, while many more are introduced just to die. There's the aforementioned President Obama, who we first meet talking to an advisor named David who looks an awful lot like Obama's advisor David Axlerod; it's not until near the end of the second issue that he's referred to as President Ogden. Similarly, we're introduced to a pop singer known for wearing outrageous get-ups, like this one, for example...

...who is called "Girly Yaya" (Get it?). There's a very popular TV show about vapid young people from New Jersey, and the cast appear a few times throughout; the name of that show is Jerseyfied (GET IT?!).

There's the father of the two kids eaten in the opening scene; a coupe of red neck stereotypes that plan on teaching Anguirus no to mess with Texas (not unlike the gun nuts who appear in Swiercyznski's first issue, actually); the Governor of Texas who believes his anti-immigrant wall can keep Angie from crossing the border; the little Russian boy who hatches Rodan, and so on.

Likely, non-monster protagonists seem to be Sergeant Steven Woods, recent recipient of the presidential medal of honor, and/or maybe the psychic twins controlling Battra's larva...at least, these are the fictional, non-parody characters original to the series.

For the most part, Powell and Marsh seem to deploy these characters either to emphasize how small and insignificant single human lives can be in relation to the titanic monsters (a point made ultra-clear when one tries to suicide-bomb Godzilla in revenge, and does nothing more than briefly confuse the King of the Monsters by popping like a bubble on his snout. They also seem to be making some rather broad statements about the shallowness of American culture—both political and entertainment culture—but the targets are so easy, and the criticism so broad and unfocused, it's hard to guess what they're saying exactly. Maybe something along the lines of if atomic age originally ushered in these monsters via film, they are now being summoned by a nihilistic and destructive culture...? I don't know.

Some of it's funny, I guess, but it seems to lack a point...or, if there is a point, its so dull that it barely pokes, let alone pierces and draws blood.

The President "Ogden" business grates, too. I've always been irritated by such half-measures of using analogues in comics, particularly ones that are completely obvious and completely unnecessary. I suppose Lady Gaga and the cast of The Jersey Shore (which I have to assume was still a relevant target when this series launched three years ago then it it is today) might have their images or names trademarked or copyrighted or could make arguments that their likenesses and names are their means of financial gain, and thus this little, barely-read Godzilla book (surely even it it outsold every other book in the direct market, its audience would still be practically molecular to that of Lady Gaga and the folks from that dumb TV show were garnering at the time). But President Obama? Public figures don't get more public than him, and there's hardly any way to use Obama's name and likeness that wouldn't be considered fair use. (Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer appear too, but; they're only partially named, kinda like David Axelrod is in his appearance).

I've always been of the opinion that if you have something to say, just say it, rather than hiding behind passive-aggressive, half-ass, it's-a-parody-but-not-really name-changing. Jersified's "The Predicament" is The Jersey Shore's "The Situation," and you're not fooling anyone, guys.

My favorite of Hester's Godzillas is the one that appears on the variant cover for the second issue, which appears unencumbered by text in the "gallery" section at the back of this book:

Note the elongated snout, that makes his Godzilla look like a slightly more realistic creature—ditto the longer, thinner arms and the fact that you can't see whether his legs are a pile of fat rubber folding in on itself or not. Hester's Godzilla, especially in that image, looks like he could whirl in any direction and take off at a run at any second, rather than simply trudging and plodding.

Hester's interior Godzilla never looks quite that elongated, but he's definitely a slimmer, more muscular, less fat and unwieldy-looking monster than the man in the suit...or, come to think of it, the ultra-faithful Alex Ross version on the cover of the trade collection. In general, he and/or McCorkindale seem to use fewer lines in their creation of Godzilla's scales, and on his fellow monsters Anguirus and Rodan. The over-all effect is that the monsters look a little less carved and a lot more drawn. The design is still tight, but the texture is smoother and more polished. They all reminded me a bit more of large, living gargoyles than articulated toys and costumes, like Hester was losing some of the detail of the suits in order to achieve something more appropriate for a comic.

Of the three series, this is probably the weakest, but it is maybe also harder to judge simply by the first volume than the Godzilla series was, as its premise isn't so quickly and throughly defined.

Here's one of the Powell covers, featuring three of the monsters:

There are three additional Powell covers in this collection, plus a fold-out, three-page image featuring monsters from these issues and several monsters who have yet to appear in the series.

Matt Frank's art is also represented by several covers; I like his Mothra one best:

The remainder of the covers come from Jeff Zornow and Paul Hanley. There's only a single image by Hanley, so it's hard to judge his skill at drawing giant monsters, but Zornow, whose variants are attached to some of the other Godzilla comics as well, is pretty great at it.

Review: Kevin Smith's Green Hornet #1

The first issue of Dynamite Entertainment’s new Green Hornet miniseries is by far the best comic book writing I’ve seen from Kevin Smith in about eight years.

I’m afraid that speaks more to the weakness of Smith’s recent comics output since he returned from his break (the second half of Spider-Man/Black Cat, Batman: Cacophony) then it does to the strengths of Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet #1.

In fact, the script for this issue isn’t exactly new, as it’s reportedly based on Smith’s script for a Green Hornet movie that he’s been attached to in various capacities over the years. The credit page gives Smith a “script by” credit, and Smith’s old Green Arrow pencil artist Phil Hester a “breakdowns by” credit, with artist Jonathan Lau handling pencils (Colors, provided by Jonathan Lau, are apparently put right on top of the pencils, with no inking).

The book’s unusual creation process is, I think, alone worth piquing a comics fan’s interest—if nothing else, it’s interesting to consider a comic book adapted from an unused film script for a never-made film adapting a superhero from the radio, TV and comics. And to wonder how Smith’s writing differs between the two media.

In the past, I would have guessed that his film work tends to be quite a bit better, as there’s so much money involved, and every word we eventually hear in it had a lot more filters to pass through, a lot more collaboration. His “View Askew-iverse” movies vs. his comics in the same fictional universe and starring the same characters tend to attest to this…in general (Oni’s four-part Jay and Silent Bob miniseries with Duncan Fegredo, which Smith partially cannibalized for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, being the exception, but then that film was by far Smith’s worst).

Is that why this is better than, say, the first issue of Batman: Cacophony, then? That Smith worked a lot harder on it, went through more drafts, and was much more careful, whereas that Batman miniseries was a paycheck waiting to happen, Smith a star writer immune to aggressive editing? Or was the Smith a few years ago a better writer than the Smith of today? (Intense laboring over his early Marvel work is certainly one way to explain the delays). Or maybe there’s something about the color green and the presence of Phil Hester that brings out the best in Smith?

I don’t know, but, like I said, these things are fun to consider. Well, they’re fun for me to consider, and that’s all that really matters here.

The book opens with a “Then” caption, and a sequence of The Green Hornet and Kato suiting up, getting in their sweet ride with green headlights, and then sneaking up on a meet between two rival crime families…which they proceed to break up, effectively ending organized crime in their fictional city.

It’s around page 17 that Britt Reid tells his wife Janet that he’s completed his mission, and would be hanging up the green fedora for good, in order to spend more time with his family, which includes a young son.

You probably know where this story’s going…and if not, the “Today” caption on page 21 oughta do the trick.

Britt Junior, a young, rich, in-shape scion of his father’s fortune is a layabout with no direction in life, a source of tabloid fodder. This is apparently going to be something of a Green Hornet: The Next Generation sort of story, as you could probably guess if you looked closely at the Kato in Alex Ross’s cover (or at all at the one in J. Scott Campbell’s cover) and noticed that this Kato’s a she.

Rated on the spectrum of Kevin Smith comics, this one’s somewhere in the middle—nowhere near as bad as the more terrible, even embarrassing comics to carry his byline, but not up there with his better work (His Oni stuff, Daredevil and Green Arrow) either.

It’s pretty generic stuff, but not necessarily bad generic. It’s a fairly straightforward, superhero movie-serious take on a rather derivative hero, free of any big mistakes or glitches, and thankfully able to avoid any of the unfortunate retrograde racial aspects that the Kato relationship can threaten (It’s been a long while since I’ve checked in with it, but I thought Dynamite’s Lone Ranger revival similarly did a good job of making the Ranger/Tonto relationship work well in the 21st century).

It’s also, remarkably, thankfully free of many of the weaknesses common to Smith’s work—I don’t recall seeing any gay jokes, or randomly applied sex jokes or juvenile potty talk and many of the pages are even free of Smith’s verbose scripting. Only a couple of pages between Britt and Janet look like the panels are threatening to burst under the weight of the dialogue balloons.

The art is clearly laid-out and easy to read. I might have preferred Hester himself pencil it, but that may simply be because his art is a known quantity to me, and I like it (And I’m curious what his Green Hornet and Kato would have looked like).

Lau’s art is at its best when the men have masks on, but I liked his elongated figures and the action scenes were presented well. Like the script, there’s nothing really bad or wrong to complain about regarding the art.

All in all, it’s not bad, but given how many Green Hornet comics Dynamite has planned for the near future, I think they needed more of a creative homerun than this issue provided if they plan to sustain interest in the franchise.

Of course, maybe the plan is simply to have enough series in the works to sell a ton of comics and trades around the time of the eventual movie’s release, in which case the simple fact that this isn’t toxic or radioactive is a triumph.



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By the way, I think DC should totally do this with Smith’s script for a Superman movie from the late nineties. Maybe with Keith Giffen doing breakdowns and Kevin Maguire penciling…? It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember liking it (better than Superman Returns, that’s for sure!) and there being some neat, JLI-like scenes between L-Ron and Lex Luthor or Brainiac.

In which I check back in with a couple of series I reviewed the first issues of

The Anchor #2 (Boom Studios) I was pretty impressed with the first issue of this new series by writer Phil Hester and artist Brian Churilla, and remained so with the second issue.

Hester teases out Clem/The Anchor’s origin a bit, sends the big, bearded bruiser and his friend Hofi to Scotland to fight an even cooler-looking monster than he fought last time, while two groups of enemies plot against him on two different planes of reality.

There’s still a great deal of mystery about who exactly this guy is and what exactly he’s whole deal is, but Hester and Churilla are telling us, they’re just doing it at their own pace—there’s no sense that they’re just drawing it out because they’re still trying to figure it out themselves or want to wait for a trade or anything.

The monster that needs a-punching this time is a huge centaur-like creature with the body of a stag, and the torso of a man, with the skull and antlers of a stag where his head should be. Wristbands, a big red beard, and a Scottish-looking, red and green plaid sash complete his look.

Oh, and Clem wears a sailor shirt and trims his own beard by ripping a fist-full of it off himself. Those things are awesome.

My only reservation regarding The Anchor is its price—it’s $3.99 for 22-pages, so it’s not one I’d personally buy in comic book form (I’ve been reading preview pdfs). If you’re richer and/or less stingy than me though, you may want to check it out. If not, make a mental note to check out the eventual trade.


Days Missing #2-#3 (Archaia) I wasn’t terribly fond of the first issue of this series, and I'm still kind of confused about its existence and production, but with these successive issues the premise at least has become perfectly clear.

Days Missing has the words “Rodenberry Presents” above it’s logo, and bears a Rodenberry logo right next to the Archaia one. It also has a credit reading “Created by Trevor Roth,” a creator who neither writes nor draws the book.

I’m guessing Roth came up with the premise for the book—a mysterious superhuman steward of humanity named The Steward with the power to alter and/or erase entire days from existence, in order to save the world—and turned it over to Archaia to develop.

Each of the first three issues have had entirely different creative teams, however. The first issue was by Phil Hester and Frazer Irving, the second by David Hine and Chris Burnham, the third by Ian Edginton and Lee Moder. Those are pretty talented individuals, and creative teams well worth paying attention to, but the books obviously lacks visual consistency, and the hopping through different times to face completely different threats makes every issue seem like a one-issue series of its own.

The good news is that it means every issue of Days Missing—which is currently a five-issue miniseries, but flexible enough to lead to more minis or an ongoing if there’s demand—is equally new-reader accessible, but the bad news is that they’re also pretty hit-or-miss.

Hine and Burnham’s issue has The Steward writing in his diary about a 19th century adventure, in which he erased the day in history when Mary Shelley met a real-life doctor who had discovered a way to reanimate the dead using lightning and later encountered the monster that resulted. The inspiration for her Frankenstein was therefore real, although The Steward did away with it, so only a vague memory was left to be turned into her novel.

The story is pretty well told, and Hine thankfully doesn’t make the parallels between Shelley’s eventual story and her encounters here too heavy-handed (The real-life doctor is named John Galton, not Frankenstein, for example).

The art was pretty wretched though, and Imaginary Friends Studios colors seem to obliterate all of Burnham’s lines, so that far too often pages look like they were produced entirely by color artists. Additionally, the character aren’t very good actors, excepting perhaps the monster himself, who seems to fit better into this style of art and color than real-life, famous 19th-century poets and writers do.

The art improves quite a bit in the third issue, in which Lee Moder provides flatter, more open work with cartoonier, more comic book-y art. I think the coloring is still far too aggressive—there are colored lines rather than black ones in many instances, for example—but the pages are cleaner, crisper and easier to read than in the previous examples.

This story involves a scientist who has noticed evidence of The Steward’s hand in history and is about to find the evidence she needs to prove that there are days missing thanks to a giant Hadron super collider. Luckily for The Steward, things work out so that he doesn’t have to choose between keeping his secret and saving the day.

These two newer issues share one problem with the first, and that’s that they seem to be 25-page stories squeezed into 22-pages. Each one has examples of pages stuffed with too much dialogue in too few panels, which can be tedious to read.


Hercules: The Knives of Kush #4 (Radical Comics) My major reservations about Radical’s use of one of fiction’s most enduring heroes from the first issue of this miniseries (which I reviewed here) concerned the art, and those haven’t changed.

The covers, like the one to the right by Clint Langley, often strike a balance somewhere between a science fiction paperback cover and a heavy metal album cover, and this one is no exception. The level of detail evaporates in the interior art though, which is provided by a trio of artists and a trio of colorists (Cris Bolson, Manuel, Leonardo Silva, Dough Sirois, Cliff Cramp and Steve Kirchow).

The characters themselves have a hyper-reality about them, but they don’t always seem to fit in the environments they interact with, or at least not as smoothly. The individual panels tend to look more like rough drafts to a video game, and thus have a different feel than the covers (And its worth noting that my objection to the art reflects my own bias against such highly produced, computer-aided art—I like to be able to see the lines the artists made, and to be able to pick out what a penciler did versus what a colorist did). I just don’t like looking at this comic book, which certainly makes reading it a lot less pleasurable for me than it should be.

Steve Moore’s script for this issue is a lot more busy, packed and fun than the set-up of the first issue, though, so I’m readers with different aesthetic prejudices than me may dig it a lot more.

Hercules and his gang of mercenaries have been employed by one side in a war between Egyptian rival factions, and the book opens with Autolycus and Ioalus undercover at an orgy (where they learn valuable information about their enemies’ sorcerer/secret weapon), leads into a chariot chase that goes down like a movie car chase, segues into some court intrigue and Oh shit our bosses are kinda evil too, huh? realizations and climaxes with a face off between two giant armies, in which this more realistic version of Herc does some seriously superheroic stuff.

I don’t like looking at it, but I kinda liked reading it.