A PAIR OF PREVIEWS

As God is my witness, the new site will open next week. You heard it here first.

Two from Oni Press, both reviewed from black & white photocopies:

THE LEADING MAN #1
Written by B. Clay Moore and Drawn by Jeremy Haun

Nick Walker is one of those guys the rest of us envy. He’s good looking, rich, and oh, yeah… one of the highest paid action movie stars in Hollywood. One of those guys who has it all. But Nick has even more than that; he’s also a real-life spy who uses his movements to filming locations to mask his covert activities.

That’s the plot behind THE LEADING MAN, Moore and Haun’s second stab at working together. Their first effort was last year’s wildly uneven BATTLE HYMN, so I went into LEADING MAN with some skepticism. With such a near-shark jump of a plot, would the creative team be able to hold the book together? In the broadest sense, that remains to be seen, but they’re at least off to a good start.

Where HYMN came out of the gate like Barbaro on a bum leg, LEADING MAN shows high energy and life immediately. From page one, where we meet Nick in the middle of filming a big action set-piece, to the sly scenes where his female co-stars try and figure out his sexuality, everything here feels pretty much right on target. Enjoyable.

LOVE THE WAY YOU LOVE #1
Written by Jamie S. Rich and Drawn by Marc Ellerby

Tristan is the lead singer of Los Angeles’ best unsigned band, Like A Dog. Isobel has just flown in from Tokyo to meet her fiancée’s grandparents. But after locking eyes at the airport, fate brings them together again when Isobel goes to scout out a band for his label and it turns out to be Tristan’s.

LOVE THE WAY YOU LOVE reads like… well, it reads just like a Jamie S. Rich story. Rich has long been comics’ hippest and slyest cat, with a knowledge of music matched by few. His novel work, like CUT MY HAIR, demonstrates his mastery of this sort of tale, so you’d expect no less than a comic that not only has a twinge of real heart to it, but also makes you feel like the coolest kid in the room for reading it.

Full of terrific supporting characters, like Tristan’s amusing brother Lance and Isobel’s best friend Branden, LOVE is fun even when it turns its focus to the edges of the story. And Rich smartly doesn’t make Isobel’s fiancée an unrepentant dick; he genuinely seems to care for her. By giving everyone in the story a stake in the outcome, LOVE gets elevated from cute toss-off to something with real deep potential. It may not have been complete love at first site, but I am definitely in deep like with this book.

/Mason