ZOMBEE
Written by Miles Gunter and Drawn by Victor Santos
Published by Image Comics

“A samurai, a ninja, and a Zen monk walk into a bar…” Sounds like the opening line to a joke, doesn’t it? But when a samurai, a ninja, and a Zen monk walk into a city that’s populated solely by the walking dead, it’s as far away from funny as you can imagine. That’s the plot behind ZOMBEE, an imaginative, if unsatisfying, graphic novel from the pen of Gunter (NYC MECH).

The fun from ZOMBEE comes directly from its premise. Much like SEA OF RED scored by bringing together vampires and pirates, so too is there brilliance in bringing zombies to Feudal Japan. These two different genres, so beloved by their fans, always run the risk of going stale. But by combining the two, each gets a jolt of freshness and there’s a sense of reinvigoration to both elements of the story. In particular, the classic shambling zombies get very boring, but when a clan of super-powered ninja gets infected and turns to the dark, that makes our heroes predicament that much worse, and the story that much richer and entertaining.

Gunter’s writing is very lean and spare here, hewing close to the tradition of the warrior being a man of few words, but he does make a couple of strategic slips by allowing characters to use modern colloquialisms. There may have been an intended hipness factor at play, but it doesn’t quite work. I can forgive it, though, as the story still holds together tightly with or without the slang. However, I can’t quite forgive as easily some of the artistic issues Santos brings to the page.

The book is in black and white, and I think that’s perfect, but Santos has a tendency to go too heavy on his ink line, and that renders bits of the storytelling unreadable. Indeed, the final battle, between the cast and the source of the zombie infection, is simply unclear in too many panels. In fact, I couldn’t really follow the action as far as specific movements went, instead relying on my impression of what I felt the script was trying to do. It was troubling, as that’s not only a no-no, but when it’s that late in the plot, it’s damned near a book killer.

So ZOMBEE is a pretty mixed reading experience. I loved the idea, and there are some truly excellent pages of art. But there are also a number of pages that just don’t work, and that takes away from your ability to enjoy the book. By no stretch of the imagination is ZOMBEE a failure, but it isn’t nearly as good as it could have been, and it could have been great. That’s a shame, in my eyes.

SIBAM?

None of which should distract anyone from the fact that this is a goldmine idea waiting to hit the screen. Swords? Zombies? The trailer alone would set the youth audience to lining up early for opening day. It shouldn’t even be an expensive shoot; the primary expense would likely be makeup. If this hasn’t been snatched up already, I can only imagine that it will be a matter of time before Miles and Victor see an option check in their mailboxes.

Marc Mason

Thomas Dare is a fairly average Joe. He’s not a great guy; he’s in the middle of his divorce due in no small part to his knocking up his mistress. He isn’t a bad guy, either; he’s a proud, loyal friend, and a talented musician. But one random day, he discovers that he’s a more extraordinary man than most, but for all the worst reasons: his body has begun to stiffen and feel heavy, because Thomas has an unknown disease that is slowing turning him into stone.

This quiet, pathos-laden story represents the finest work I’ve seen out of Joe Casey in his comics career. I’ve always had very little taste for Casey’s work (though GODLAND has started to grow on me a bit), finding it self-congratulatory and aggrandizing in its cleverness. But ROCK BOTTOM is genuine, emotional, complex… Dare is the realest character Casey has brought to the page. You feel like you know this man, and the challenges he faces as death creeps upon him are ones you can understand and empathize with along the journey.

Consider… the only thing that’s ever really given your life meaning is your music, but stone fingers cannot glide along the piano keys in a meaningful, expressive way. Your mistress is pregnant with your child… the disease killing you could be hereditary. What decision should be made about the fetus? The book is replete with brutal, harsh moments that get into your heart, and that’s a rarity on the stands these days.

Charlie Adlard has been one of my favorite artists since he came on the scene, and he takes a very different approach to his work on ROCK BOTTOM. Normally, he is the master of shading and toning, but since those effects must be used to portray Dare’s transformation, he draws the book in pure lines, using subtle marks of ink to convey depth and motion. It’s beautiful stuff and shows that there’s more to Adlard than we knew before.

ROCK BOTTOM is an excellent effort and a fine read, recommendable to the mature, intelligent reader. Track down a copy and check it out.

SIBAM?

The role of Thomas Dare would certainly be appealing to an actor. He’s a complicated, multi-faceted man, and his predicament provides numerous scenes that would allow a talented thespian to stretch and emote. This is the kind of character that tends to break someone out of the pack at a film festival. I wouldn’t be surprised to see ROCK BOTTOM snatched up by someone looking for a story that would give them a shot at an award or two.

Marc Mason

Polly Pringle is a proper young girl; she’s well liked at her boarding school, her father is an ambassador, and she’s not as prone to flights of fancy as many of her classmates. But her life is changed forever one night, as she’s kidnapped from her dormitory room by a rowdy band of pirates. It seems that they believe her to be the daughter of the Pirate Queen Meg, and they want the young girl to assume her mother’s mantle and lead the crew to their long-lost treasure. But surely these men must be mental, Polly reasons; according to her father, her mother died during childbirth. And she was certainly no sort of pillaging adventurer! But as Polly falls deeper into the pirates’ scheming and discovers that many leadership qualities come extremely naturally to her, she must re-examine everything she thinks she knows about her life.

POLLY is a series that I began praising from its first issue onward, as it offers up an exhilarating action tale that will appeal to young girls, young boys, and just about anyone else who picks it up to give it a read. And at this point in time, it would take a crowbar and tequila to pry it off my year-end top-ten list. In an era where comics have increasingly forgotten to be, well, fun, POLLY AND THE PIRATES never forgets. Never. Every character, every line of dialogue… executed with pitch-perfect precision by Naifeh, who simply makes the best comics for young female readers today that aren’t manga. This is a wonderful book, and the fact that Naifeh leaves the ending open for a sequel gives me great hope that we’ll see what’s up his sleeve next for this charming cast of characters.

SIBAM?

POLLY would make for a terrific film, no question. And while the initial inclination might be to animate the story, I’d say that a live-action take would work best. Teen girl adventure stories have proven they can do good box office, especially when they aren’t marketed exclusively to that audience. From films like THE SECRET GARDEN to SPY KIDS (that’s right- in case you didn’t realize it, the first two films were driven by Alexa Vega), the audience has shown they’ll turn out and support the material. A Dakota Fanning could turn this into a blockbuster with relative ease. Hopefully, a sharp producer out there will spot this book and see the potential in it for box office success.

Marc Mason

THE EXPENDABLE ONE
Written by Jason M. Burns and Drawn by Bryan Baugh
Published by Viper Comics

Twigs Dupree is an almost pathetically normal guy. He can’t talk to women, is as homely as the day is long, has a best friend who constantly makes his life Hell, and his job of selling lawnmowers is middle-class defined. You wouldn’t look twice at Twigs Dupree… normally. But Twigs has a secret that has changed his life: thanks to his friend’s odd science experiments, Twigs is now immortal. Shoot him, burn him, blow him up, it doesn’t matter… Twigs will regenerate.

Now, if you had that power, maybe you’d try and help people. Twigs certainly does. But he lacks true direction until FBI Agent Armstrong shows up in his life. She and her bright pink stockings are on the trail of a vicious serial killer known as The Animal, and The Animal might just be a werewolf. And who better to track and take down the hairy fiend than a man who cannot die?

THE EXPENDABLE ONE is an entertaining “shut off your brain” popcorn flick put to paper. Burns’ zippy dialogue and Baugh’s amusingly detailed art keep you flipping from page with a smile on your face. If you stopped to think real hard about some of the plot points (like Twigs and his friend Jerry’s lack of curiosity or where local law enforcement is in the wake of the opening scene), the book would begin to crumble under its own weight. But with a book like this one, the fun factor outweighs many logic issues.

There are some nice extras in the book, too. Burns and artist Nicc Balce (RANDOM ENCOUNTER) provide a back-up story detailing Agent Armstrong’s “origin”, there’s a sketchbook, pin-up gallery, and more, making the book a solid bang for your buck. This is a high-concept lark, and lots of fun.

SIBAM?

There’s a certain sense of obviousness to this book’s option-worthiness. The concept itself is easily sellable, whether to an exec or through a two-minute trailer. Humor, action, some scares… this has “summer flick” tattooed on its ass. Plus, Baugh himself is an animation storyboarder by trade, so the book is already laid out for a director. Plus, the conclusion leaves plenty of room for sequels, graphic or otherwise. Put together a decent cast, and you have a mid-level priced movie that could make big cheddar.

Marc Mason

OCCULT CRIMES TASKFORCE #1
Written by David Atchison and Rosario Dawson and Drawn by Tony Shasteen
Published by Image Comics

Sophia Ortiz wants nothing more than to be a good cop, just like her father. But when she’s suspended for refusing to leave a crime scene when ordered, it looks like her dreams are dead. But a mysterious transfer to a special crimes unit will be offered to her that will change her life; Manhattan, it seems, houses a gateway to another realm. That means that, beneath the uncivil veneer of humanity that covers the island, there’s also an uncivil veneer of beats, baddies, and magic users. Enter the O.C.T.: the Occult Crimes Taskforce.

As you might imagine, Ortiz is a little skeptical, but it doesn’t take long for her to wind up face-to-face with a demon in a dark alley, and her new assignment is underway.

O.C.T. is structured in classic fashion; meet the heroine, put heroine’s career in jeopardy, bring her to the next level, explain the set-up, start her special training, and go from there. That gives you 25 minutes or so of screen time if you’re making a movie… or one of four issues if you’re doing a limited comicbook series. It would be an easy criticism to say that the familiarity of the whole scenario erodes any pleasure you might take in the story itself. After all, change the gender, and I just gave you the first 30 minutes of MEN IN BLACK.

However, I tend to believe that formula is perfectly acceptable if it is executed appropriately. I’ll take formula all day, as long as it doesn’t treat the reader like they’re stupid. And O.C.T. does a pretty decent job of winking at the formula and pushing forward.

Plus, we not only get a clever concept to chew on, but we get the extremely rare Latina heroine in a comic. ULTRA finished over a year ago, and Renee Montoya is getting about six pages of every other issue of 52, so Ortiz occupies a pretty rare seat these days.

Nothing about O.C.T.’s dialogue is going to blow you out of the water, but it does the job it needs to do. However, the one truly outstanding thing about the book is the art by Shasteen; his work has a strong sense of photo-realism, but it doesn’t look stiff like so many others who work in that style. Throw in the Occult Crimes Taskforce Officer Training Manual that gets printed at the end of the book, and this is a solid package.

SIBAM?

Well, considering Rosario Dawson’s involvement on the writing end and that Ortiz is drawn to look like her, yeah, I think this could be headed towards the big screen. Dawson is a versatile actress, and has done a number of “big” pictures, but the one thing that has yet to fall into her grasp is a franchise of her own. O.C.T. is clearly meant to rectify that. Surround her with a solid supporting cast, and this could easily find an audience of summer popcorn purchasers.
 
Marc Mason