To start with I’m going to tell you to not read this review. Instead just go to the Kickstarter for The Work and support it because it’s worth your money. If you’ve decided to continue reading the review then that’s cool, I mean that’s why I’m writing it, but do support it. It’s a weird thing, sometimes you piece together things after you’ve already talked about it. For instance, it took talking to Steve on this week’s podcast to put all the pieces together for this comic. The Work is in reference to the wrestling term, “work” in which the decision for the match is already made. The winner is predetermined so it’s a “work” on the audience. That’s not the only marriage of comics and wrestling, two entertainment mediums that share a lot in common including their fanbase at times.
We meet Conner who is disturbed on his day off. On his way to work his narration explains the world to us. The average Joe buys into the superheroes that parade around the city, let’s call them our marks. The rich and others bet on the fights as a form of entertainment, we’ll call them smart marks. Lastly is The Party which is a secret organization of the mega rich that fix every fight. Conner is an agent and he orchestrates the fights to go down without a hitch and the way his employers want. If you know a thing or two about wrestling, this should all sound familiar.
Conner’s day off has been interrupted by his boss to inform him that he has a new person to train. We meet Scarlet who has apparently found out a bit too much about the behind the scenes of the superhero world, but talked herself into a job instead of an early grave. Her outlook on the world is positive while Conner's is jaded and bitter. In a way it's like a new wrestling fan talking to an old wrestling fan (bonus switch the world "wrestling" for "comic" and it still works!).
The Work is the perfect blend of wrestling and comics. Really if you know anything about the two then you’re going to love this book because you’ll be able to see how well laid out it is. As great as the concept is, the thing that will keep the story moving is Scarlet being the polar opposite of Conner. Their dynamic will be the thing that makes or breaks the entire series, but given how well they banter with each other in this first issue, I’d say we’re in for a treat.
The concept is great, but the dialogue and narration are equally deserving of praise. The dialogue is natural and uses swearing, in a way that isn’t annoying or gratuitous. I love swearing, but when a comic swears so much that you lose the sentence in the swear then you’re doing it wrong. The Work makes it fit naturally and not come across as a Tarantino movie.
In the end though the art is what sold me on this book in a big way. For an indie comic with just one creator, Andrew Sebastian Kwan, it’s a professional presentation. Kwan not only has a wonderful style, but he understands the medium and uses the gutters in interesting ways to move the story along. Even though there’s narration, the visuals are well-balanced with the narration.
The coloring though, oh man it's really good. Coloring and lettering are the unspoken heroes of comics and sure they’re getting more recognition lately from reviewers, but they’re still not given enough credit. Kwan does the coloring with flats by John Siozon and it’s some of my favorite coloring I’ve seen so far this year. It’s professional looking and honestly puts a lot of major comic releases to shame. Kwan’s lettering is also professional and a part of the visual storytelling. A great example is Scarlet’s alarm blaring and then the “Click” of her turning it off. The unspoken heroes are just straight up heroes in this issue.
If you stuck around this long than thanks, but really you should go check out the Kickstarter. I’m hopefully that Kwan will make his goal because it’s a book that I instantly wanted to read more of. Being a wrestling fan helped, but at the end of the day this is just a really interesting take on the superhero genre and that’s extremely difficult to do these days.
Score: 5/5
The Work #1 Writer/Artist/Letterer: Andrew Sebastian Kwan Color Flats: John Siozon Self-Published Kickstarter Link
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/929507002/the-work-issue-1
That’s why I like Donny Cates as a writer, easy ideas to understand, but the execution is so much bigger than the sum of it's parts. Take Buzzkill for example, a hero that has to take drugs to have powers and each drug gives him a different power, but he’s not exempt from the drug’s effects. Drinking still gets him drunk and so on. And that’s not even what the story is about. It’s like when I tell you that a government semi-truck story is really about the apocalypse. You’ll kind of go, “huh?”, but that’s exactly what The Ghost Fleet is about when you boil it down. They’re simple to explain which is the charm, but then very detailed and deep stories.
Wynonna Earp (a descendant of Wyatt Earp) is a Special Agent of The Black Badge Division of the U.S. Marshalls. Her job is to hunt supernatural entities that are causing harm to the normal world. In this issue she is investigating cannibal creatures in the middle of Idaho with ties to her archenemy Mars Del Rey. The concept here isn’t original but the execution is decently done.
Judge Dredd #3 continues to put overwhelming physical and psychological odds against Dredd and juxtaposes a more complicated goal than ever before. How is he supposed to be something that no longer exists? That is one of the hardest perils Dredd has had to deal with in the many years he’s been in publication. The addition of the feral girls, just like pairing him with Judge Anderson, allows for Dredd to be the unwavering badass he is while they fill the role of putting emotions and sensible reactions to the situations. Their characteristics are well defined and the have a good balance with each other with clear voices and like all children, wearing their hearts on their sleeves. The goals of Dredd, although established, the method he could take seems to blur away more and more, while it’s seen what he might set out to do as far as finding out what happened to Mega-City One, it’s only a glimpse and and this issue favors more to resolving the short term problems at hand.
Strontium Dog remains excellent, especially since one of my favorite things is when Ezquerra draws spaceships. Not only do we get spaceships in this issue, but we get spaceships shooting other spaceships. And really, what's better than that? The "Repo Men" arc appears to be nearing its climax, and while it has taken its time unfolding, particularly in the middle, it has still been the star of the last couple of months of Progs.
Heartthrob #1 thoroughly sets up its world, which is equal parts the beginning of Wanted, mixed with the damaged and careless character of Jessica Jones. Callie’s world is shown up until that moment. How she coped with her condition and how sick of the world she is pitying or flat out rejecting her, she wants to do more and she’s on a mission to give herself the extra life to do it. Once she’s able to do it, Mr. Mercer begins to show up and whisper sweet nothings to her. Callie is a deeply flawed character and a strong protagonist. A person who has always aspired for more and the opportunity to do something big presents itself in the least way expected. As far as Mr. Mercer goes, he is presented in a very interesting way; vulnerable. There are glimpses of him as the cool and suave con man he is poised to be, but that persona has been portrayed time and time again, so the choice to have him put himself out there for Callie is a lot more interesting. Hopefully this continues and Mercer will show to be just as flawed as Callie if not more, which will make for a great relationship.
Of course, there's more to Wayward than just a showcase of yokai: if there wasn't, I don't think it would still be published, nor would I still bother reading it, frankly. But the experience of reading Wayward is interesting in that reading it monthly and reading a trade feel more different than a similar reading exercise with another title. Much of the substance of the series comes from reading it while focused on the meat of whatever the current arc is concerned with. This isn't something that comes across well in single issues, sometimes. Issues of Wayward, taken individually, often have an uneven pull between character development and the plot at hand. Switching from the nefarious plot of the villain to tender character moments feels like an exercise in plot necessity rather than an organic development.
The table is set and everyone is having their own dinner. What I mean to say is that all our characters are set up, and they’ve set off on their own paths that cross from time to time, depending on what time the story is being told and from whose point of view, which is something that speaks to the world of independent wrestling circuit, where everyone comes around each other at one point of another. Ringside continues to be gritty and gnarly but has one or two more twists in this issue. The conversations are prolonged, and also shows a new side of prospect wrestlers, who want to stay in the straight and narrow, whereas the old guard were just enjoying their time in the spotlight and Carpe fucking Diem. The issue keeps going back around Dan’s quest to find Teddy, and his newfound bail bonds friend who’s taken pity on Dan and helps him not get killed without getting his own hands dirty. Little does he know, the old Minotaur can still ram some motherfuckers here and there if needed.
Black Clover has cemented itself as a must-read. It's honestly worth it to go back and buy the issues that comprise the current arc just to witness the fight with the mysterious, treacherous bearers of light magic. As I mentioned several reviews ago, a big part of the current fight is the fact that it hinted at an important secret underlying this series: the theft of magic via the genocide of the original magical race. If true, it changes the landscape of this series completely. Yet even independent of the brief but major tease embedded in this fight, the fight itself has been outstanding. Tabata has shown before that detailed magic fight scenes are capable of setting Black Clover apart. This fight, however, features Asta maturing as a swordsman. Adding this dimension to the series is such a huge boon to the series, both dramatically and visually. The sword has been anti-magic and a central feature of the series so far, but hasn't really seen much action as a sword ought to.
The young chieftain reveals that he was watching when Conan and his comrades were first ambushed back in issue two, and that he saw where Conan hid the ancient crown, things begin to look up. All hope is lost when the evil Picts emerge from the jungle, the Dark Witch Kwarada was, unsurprisingly, tracking Conan the entire time. The ensuing battle leaves Conan the last man standing, the young Chief captured along with the crown, and a pile of corpses rotting in the jungle heat. A perfect set-up for the final chapter of this excellent adventure.
Cry Havoc #2 strikes me as being the issue where readers will be able to grasp exactly how excited they are about this series. The first issue floats around the edges of what this story has in store, but the second sends us headlong into a churning eddy of monster, myth, and... well, masturbation. The tripartite juxtaposition of the rote, repetitive London life, the shock of serving in Afghanistan, and the horrors of being held captive is executed to great effect by this three-pronged coloring team. What sets them up for success, however, are the more basic page elements, both in the story itself and in its construction, that really give this story its personality.
The characters are exclusively the five children mentioned before, but oddly, they remain largely undefined beyond a few stereotypes. We have a bully from a bad family, an unpopular chubby girl, a moody nerd, an annoying little brother, and a flaky wannabe popular girl. These are not bad starting points for characters, but over four issues, no noticeable growth has occurred, and, more annoyingly, no reason to care has been given.
But it measures this in something rather more intimate: a violently fractured family dynamic so common of the actual depression; one that, again, is built as perhaps the world’s most pressing threat. And honestly, this issue has it all: fantastic, dynamic characterization, which shows true autonomy of voice; simultaneous conflicts that range from class to race warfare; and that family story, which focuses everything into a personal struggle not unlike what you might see in Locke & Key in a weird way. Kelly coagulates all of this into an atmospherically thick story about blood, fire and pain that is truly beautiful to behold, with an equally gorgeous visual assist from Fiumara’s singularly unique artistic style.
Writer Chuck Amadori doesn’t shy away from social commentary here. The attitudes of racism and sexism are brought up several times, but they are balanced by acceptance and characters seeing past their differences to unite for a common good. Dialogue is definitely realistic for the time period. Each character has their own distinct dialect specific to their background. This made every character feel well-represented and believable.
Blaze, has emerged as the new Misfits lead vocalist, replacing the sidelined Pizzazz. And Blaze always looks understandably lost, a little dazzled and awed by the flashiness of her rock star friends. She's a stand-out character. I won't get into exactly why that is, but if this was at all a superhero book I would expect Blaze to become the temporary new lead character. The tone of this issue really has the feeling of a new hero rising from the shadows to save the old hero. And it should suffice say the Misfits' portion of this issue very briefly and nonchalantly addresses a hot topic in the context of how groups accept new members. The book does this without making me imagine slow, twinkling, very special episode of "Full House" music playing over the scene. The Misfits are kind of crappy people, but even they have their crap limits. This is kind of a theme throughout the issue.
Rowan's attempts to enter the house to check on Alex interspersed with her battle with the duplicate is a tense horror-movie sequence that functions incredibly well, due in no small part to how much the reader is invested in both characters. Nicola Slott sells the physicality of the fight even though parts of it are completely magical (a pattern of bruises and wounds appearing magically over Alex's face is extraordinarily creepy). Similarly, the subtle coloring works when wonders when Rowan gets involved in the fight. Her use of her gun and badge as part of her magical attack are hugely in keeping both with her as a character and with the world that Rucka has been so carefully setting up.