CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA

First, a brief note of explanation: the Blog Extra will be a semi-weekly feature for a while, as I have a number of other commitments that will force me to take a few weekends off for other purposes. After all: it’s far more important to get the weekday updates ready than anything else.

This latest edition covers two new books from Viper Comics. So let’s see what’s making its way out of Texas these days, shall we?

THE LOST BOOKS OF EVE #1 is written and drawn by Josh Howard. Most will know Howard from his DEAD @17 franchise, so EVE will certainly offer some surprises. Pretty much the only two things the books have in common is a female protagonist. EVE is about the woman created from Adam’s rib, and Howard positions the book as a “lost” book of the Bible (perhaps a piece of the Apocrypha). As the story begins, Adam has gone missing, thrown overboard from the duo’s raft during a storm. After a confrontation with God about the nature of free will, Eve decides to leave the garden and try and discover what has happened to her mate. This plays as a relatively intriguing and interesting idea to build a series upon, and it’s certainly a brave direction to take. I have only two qualms, neither religion-based; one, Eve is nude throughout the majority of the book, but Howard takes great pains to obscure her bits. As an indy book, I think the book would have been better served by acknowledging and showing, rather than forcing odd camera angles and such. My second qualm is the lack of story pages. I made note of this in Howard’s last issue of DEAD, and it applies here: there are less than twenty actual pages of story/art here. Good book, but needing a bit more in the way of value.

Jason Burns writes, and Ron Chan draws, A DUMMY’S GUIDE TO DANGER #4, the conclusion to what has been an excellent miniseries. When last we left Alan Sirois and his ventriloquist dummy companion Bloomberg, they had arrived at the love of Alan’s life Teri’s apartment to find her lying in a bathtub full of blood. Fortunately, she turns out to be breathing, but getting her to the hospital isn’t going to be easy. Boyd, the cop who has it in for Alan, stands in the way, and the killer hasn’t left the premises yet. Without giving too much away, I’ll note that Burns’ story delivers a fair and satisfying ending. Alan continues to take beating after beating, you still don’t find him to be completely sane, and there’s no cop out or supernatural twist involving Bloomberg. DUMMY is the kind of book that is best served by an indy publisher like Viper, as Marvel or DC would likely try and impose false or stupid ideas (such as a supernatural twist for Bloomberg) rather than let the author’s story play out organically as it does here. Solid work, and a trade edition I would expect to sell well.

See you throughout the week for site updates!

/Mason