I hope I did not tell too much about the story in reviewing Issue #1, but that doesn’t give you the full experience. You need to read how Johns puts the pieces together, how the dialogue contains character reveals, and the expressive art of Frank and vivid colors of Anderson paint the full picture. It’s the same as if I tried to describe the R-rated fight scenes in DEADPOOL/WOLVERINE to you - - you have to see it for yourself for maximum effect.
Continuing from Issue #1, Geiger and Nate the Nuclear Knight pursue the rumor of a potential cure for the Glowing Man. Bounty hunters and enemies are close on their trail the entire time.
The journey takes them to Silverton where they learn the person they sought no longer lives there. They barter with the town sheriff. If Gieger kills the Masked Man bombing and robbing the town, the sheriff will give him the name and new location of the man. The chase on motorbikes and across the top of a moving train is mostly wordless and very cinematic. There are some absolutely gorgeous panels this issue.
The travel to their next destination, Lewistown, requires them to cross an abandoned airport property which turns out to be a breeding ground for the Organ People. In the ensuing battle with some patrolling guards, Geiger’s book gets burned again. (Books are Geiger’s only escape from his current life.)
During their next encampment, Nate leaves to find another library or bookstore to replace the item. Unfortunately, Barney (Geiger’s two-headed dog, raised from a puppy) follows and is captured by the cruel bounty-hunter The Electrician.
In order to rescue Barney they have to cross through the airport and confront the entire throng of Organ People. Issue #4 ends with their capture by The Electrician. FOUR STARS.
Although all three are severely wounded, and using some downtime to recuperate from physical and emotional wounds. Barney isn’t eating, and leaves their current camp to explore. He meets a mutated zebra foal (three eyes) who leads him to his freshly killed parents. The hunters are still around and Barney and the zebra flee, hoping to avoid being shot in the former High Plains Zoo. All the animals run loose now, both normal and mutated versions, and seem to gather around the zoo area. That makes them easy prey for big game hunters, killing the mutated animals and capturing lions, etc for sale as trophies or meat to wealthy elites.
Their story, and how Barney shows them how to fight back, make up the bulk of Issue #6, one of my favorite standalone stories. Seeing Gary Frank get a chance to illustrate zoo animals is pretty special.
In other developments, from the new White House in South Virgina - President Griffin (wrapped in bandages and looking like Negative Man from Doom Patrol) tells the gas-masked helmeted Custodian (both characters from 2022’s Volume One of Gieger) to get Air Force One ready to confront the Glowing Man in person. Best image is the Funko figure of Junkyard Joe on the presidential desk.
I suspect these first six issues will comprise the first trade paperback of the new series. This is a good point to take a break and read something else. FOUR STARS.
#5-#9 = LEGION #1-#5 BY Peter Milligan and Wilfredo Torres (Marvel Comics, March-July 2018) I loved the opening premise of this story right from the get-go.
From the credits page of Issue #1: “Born the illegitimate sone of famed mutant activist Charles Xavier, David Haller’s past is marred by trauma. Both physical and psychological . . . but he doesn’t bear this weight alone. Hundreds of unique personas, all with separate mutant abilities, live within his mind. He is many. He is LEGION.”
How’s this for some local flavor?: The story begins in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Legion is loose, wandering the Amish countryside before collapsing due to extreme mental pressure and confusion. An Amish farmer discovers him and drops him off at an emergency room, where the hospital staff mistakenly assume he’s had an epileptic seizure.
David Haller’s self-diagnosis from the opening page is more accurate: “I’m insane. I don’t mean insane as in weird, or eccentric, or a ferocious party animal. . . I mean certified, bona fide schizophrenic with dissociative identity disorder . . . That’s what the doctors label me, anyhow. Schizophrenic. But really - - they don’t have name for what I’ve got.”
Who better to write about this character than Peter Milligan, a master of psychological drama in comics? A dream team would be to have this illustrated by Michael Allred, but perhaps he wasn’t available. Art is by Wilfredo Torres - his style is similar to Allred but not as expressive or inventive.
The conflict occurs when one of Legion’s personas, calling itself Lord Trauma, begins to assert itself and take charge. Legion seeks the help of a famed celebrity psychotherapist, Dr. Hannah Jones. She attempts to insert her consciousness into Legion’s mind to come up with a fix. She encounters various other interesting and quirky personas. The deeper she goes, the more unraveled and confused she becomes, risking insanity herself. Lord Trauma senses this and manifests in the real world alongside Legion, where he hopes to disconnect the monitors and destroy her physical body.
Jones has to put her own physical and mental health at risk to combat Lord Trauma. The closer she gets to battling him inside Legion’s mindspace, the more her own trauma begins to manifest itself.
Do they succeed? Anything can happen in a Milligan story. Suffice to say I was satisfied with the ending, but that’s not a guarantee that others will be. FOUR STARS.
#10 = PARLIAMENT OF ROOKS #1 written, illustrated & colored by Abigail Jill Harding with script assist and lettering by Richard Starkings (Ablaze Publishing, October 2024) This evocative gothic monster tale was originally a digital release from Comixology, earning it a 2024 Eisner Nomination for Best Digital Series.
Events take place during the rise of the industrial revolution in a mythical land. The King is an advocate of progress, and overlooks the poisoning of the air and waters that the new factories produce. His daughter hires a wealthy young socialite to act as architect for a library project for the entire kingdom.
The King frowns upon both the project and the architect, Darius Ravenscar, and hires a highwayman to ambush and murder him after Darius shows up at the Princess’ masquerade ball.
There’s much more to young Darius, bothered by frequent dreams of another life in an alternate dark world. He seems to be followed everywhere by crows/rooks overhead. The ambush sets off the release of his other persona, the mysterious Crow-like monstrosity.
The art is very creepy and appropriate, and reminds me of old Creepy and Eerie stories when they were set in Victorian times. Harding depicts her story in black and white with effective splashes of color in the right places. FOUR STARS.
There are two storylines running parallel: 1) Jessica Jones broke free years ago of the evil influence of Zebediah Killgrave/The Purple Man. He’s not dead, but is immobile in an unconscious state and should not pose a threat. However, Jessica meets a woman recently arrested for murdering her own family. She tells Jessica that she also was a former victim of the Purple Man, who implanted thoughts in her brain that are now activated after ten years. With her own 10-year anniversary of freedom from the Purple Man coming up, Jessica is afraid of killing her own family and sends husband Luke Cage and daughter Dani away for their own safety.
2) Jessica is confronted at her home by three different variant versions of herself: one bearing the mantle of Captain America, the second with a romantic attachment to Daredevil, and the third in her super hero guise of Jewel. After a skirmish they overcome their suspicions and confusion and decide to work together. Later, Jessica receives a cryptic note from yet another variant warning her not to trust the other three. Luke also get attacked by a male variant of Jessica Jones.
From there the story twists in imaginative ways and things get crazy in the final two issues, as Simone has more in store for readers - - including telepathic aid from Professor Xavier and a reveal of the actual mastermind behind recent events. Good stuff. FOUR STARS.
Like Volume I, this is heads above your standard Godzilla story. Those who like to read tales of the good/bad monster but yearn for more than just another clash of titans will find a lot more of substance here as Frank Tieri establishes the importance of Godzilla and other kaiju in alternative history. On the other hand if you want more battle action (especially with the creative Inaki Miranda on art) you might be disappointed with SONS OF GIANTS. While this is very interesting with plenty of detail, it is essentially a set-up for the final volume - laying out the background and establishing the threat/conflict.
The main story occurs on the East Coast of the United States in 1804, just after Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The kaiju cult is the Sons Of Giants. The leader is President Thomas Jefferson, who is recruiting an investigative journalist who may know the location of Benjamin Franklin’s secret lab.They do find it, along with details on a worldwide threat as well as a miraculous solution. The story will be concluded in GODZILLA: HERE THERE BE ALIENS. Yep, as crazy as that seems - - it’s an alien invasion of shape-shifters who have their own armada of kanji to assist in their conquest.
Throughout the five issues, the presence of Godzilla in historic events is detailed: a battle with a samurai in early Japan; the beginnings of the secret society in ancient Rome; Beowulf and Grendel; the emergence of Mothra during the Egyptian plagues protecting the exodus of Moses and his people; the presence of Rhodan when Mayans were conquered by Spain; and the alliance of Godzilla with Mothra and Rodan to take down the three-headed dragon King Ghidorah.
The art style and coloring is altered from the main story during these historical flashback panels to give things more of a children’s textbook look, which is quite effective. THREE AND ONE-HALF STARS.
What saves it and also helps maintain the rating is the amazing art by Jeremy Haun and colors by Lee Loughridge. Be forewarned that this is very bloody and graphic with several scenes of the huge werewolf dismembering victims.
The twists in werewolf lore that Bunn introduces (and the missed opportunities) are:
1) The werewolf is more like a skin walker, inhabiting a human for one full moon and then changing its host a month later during the next full moon. The former hosts are naturally altered forever, having experienced the savage werewolf killing frenzy from the inside and unable to halt it. Families are disrupted, some sink into deep depression, promising careers are ended, and suicides occur. Many, like the main character, make it their business to try and hunt down the werewolf and kill it. Bunn does explore the results on the human mindset, but those scenes are too brief and fall flat.
2) The other avenue introduced but not properly explored is that many who lost family members to the werewolf blame the surviving hosts and then hunt them down, incorrectly hoping that by killing a former host the threat is ended. I can't recall any scenes related to this, just it gets mentioned in a few conversations and then discarded.
Six issues was certainly enough to further explore those themes, but Bunn and company seem to take the easy route with numerous scenes of werewolf carnage, the standard bloodbath we come to expect when reading werewolf stories. Maybe a print novel would have provided Bunn the proper room to stretch and fully develop this story. FOUR STARS, saved by ambition and art.
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