Comics You Should Read 1: Beasts of Burden

Big or small
Short or tall
Here's what happens to us all
We go to sleep
We close our eyes
And leave behind a nest of flies.
- Traditional Canine verse

Beasts of Burden just came out in a very nice hardcover that isn't even expensive. Is it on your shelf? No? Why on earth not?

Want to check it out? The first few stories are online at Dark Horse.

The Premise
A group of dogs and one cat live on Burden Hill, a place being increasingly plagued by supernatural happenings.

This isn't your normal talking animal story. It is creepy, it is sad. It is also weird and funny.

The dogs all have different personalities and different breeds to emphasize that. Also of note is that they seem to have their own religion and legends. That being said, sometimes they act like typical dogs, and it never feels so personified they might as well be humans. The comic wouldn't work if they weren't animals.

The Characters
There's a whole slew of interesting charming characters. I happen to like them all.

It does take a while to match er, muzzles to names, but because of the difference in breeds, you always know who is who.

It also subverts expectations a little; the doberman Rex is a coward.

The Art

Jill Thompson, watercolours.

The art is gorgeous, evoking a fairytale feel while having enough leeway to be downright creepy and sometimes gruesome.

The art seals the deal, and the comic wouldn't be half as good without it.

More artists need to use watercolours for the entire comic (I'm looking at you Dustin Nguyen). Just because you can use digital colours for everything doesn't mean you should.

Just as the comic wouldn't be the same without the art, it wouldn't work if it wasn't for the writing.

The Writing

The dialogue is pretty good - all the dogs have individual voices. The plots are all very interesting and unique, the shorter stories and the longer stories are both paced very well, no bits that stick out as unnecessary or overly melodramatic. The narration, something I usually shy away from in this medium, is rather well done.

What really gets me, what's really important - is that you care about the characters. You believe these characters. Some scenes are genuinely heartbreaking or heartwarming, and that counts for a lot. So kudos, Evan Dorkin.

Other

One weird little nitpicky thing I have is with the lettering. The original lettering for the short stories is done by Jill Thompson (I'm pretty sure), and she's pretty decent with lettering. Her lettering has a character to its own that is hard to replicate. I get the feeling she hand-draws it like she does everything else, so it looks awesome. If you look closely at the bolded words you see inconsistencies and gaps that make a rather neat effect. The lettering itself is unique and carries a lot of emotion like everything else in this book.

For the main mini, the lettering changes. I'm assuming this is Jason Arthur here. While it's not bad lettering, per say, it looses a lot of the character and you can tell it was computer made. So for me it's a little jarring. It makes sense that you'd want to lift the burden of the lettering off of Thompson's shoulders, especially considering she's doing the colouring too, but I still miss it.

The extras are few, but neat, and not anything you haven't really seen before in terms of works in progress.



So all in all, Beasts of Burden is a good, unique comic that you really should be reading.

This Week's Comics 1: Lots of Art Commentary in Here Dudes

Welcome to the first post from Geekeries. Please note that there will be SPOILERS.

Brightest Day: Justice League: Generation Lost #4
I had been wondering why I was still buying this title. Sure, I like the characters (though admittedly I haven't quite gotten all the JLI trades yet) and I'm inclined to buy anything that Jaime Reyes is in except Teen Titans because that shit is awful.

But I wasn't really getting anything out of it.

I was pleasantly surprised by this issue. Let's talk about it for a minute.

The art is okay. Joe Bennett knows how to get expressive. A little over the top, but in superhero comics you kind of want that - you can't describe somebody feeling fear, so you want to get that across in a single panel. Jo Bennett is good at that, in my opinion. He's also good at having action flowing, putting energy into the page and having it be understandable.

I don't quite like his art because 1) there's a skritchy sort of feeling to it that I'm fully aware is a problem I have with his style and not necessarily makes it bad art. 2) Totally biased here, but I think he's having a really hard time drawing Blue Beetle. Unfortunately for Jaime, some artists get his suit, and some artists drop the ball. Bennett is okay with the suit, but how he draws Jaime's face leaves much to be desired. 3) JESUS CHRIST, MAN - SHOW US BOOSTER'S EYES. Yes his goggles are yellow, but you can still see through them. I will give him props to how the shadows in the goggles do show a bit of his eyes, which would be very neat on another character, but doesn't suit Booster. Not to mention it's really distracting. Use it some of the time, not all of the time. 4) Not so sure Ice's shirt should be giving quite that much definition.


_{Look at this! Look at this!}

On a completely different note, Tony Harris & JD Mettler knocked this cover out of the park. Very nice. It feels like Russian Constructivist propaganda with the Rocket Reds and that really works with what goes on in the issue. But mostly it's just really striking. You can't really go wrong with black white and red, honestly. Well, you'd have to work real hard to be bad at it anyway. I like the softer brush-looking style of the drawings with the hark lines of the background. This is a nice cover, dudes. It is making me jealous.

What actually happened this issue!

So it starts out with a research lab that Max Lord arrives at. I'm going to be completely neutral with the whole evil Max Lord thing and not really say anything about it. Anyway, so Max talks to doctor dude, and the scientist is all: "Are you even allowed here, guy?" and Max is all: "LOL, no. I'm just making time until I can do the whole mind-control thing" and the scientist is all: D:
That... doesn't turn out that well for Max. And that's pretty cool. After the smug first page, it's nice to see him off-balance. The reveal that his powers are freaking out on him raises questions about the whole Making-The-World-Forget-About-Him thing, but it is a neat twist, and does tie it into the whole Blackest Night/Brightest Day thing.

Then it goes to the heroes and the Rocket Red team, and it turns out there's this communist rogue Rocket Red who totally fanboys over them going "OMG, it's the JLI" and the heroes are like "Wat. The JLI is totally over, dude." ANYWAY.
The neat thing here is that the older heroes are all "We shouldn't get involved in the Rocket Red fight" and then civilians get involved and then they're like "...Right, we're getting involved." Hey! Superheroes caring about people! That's nice. That's classic superheroism right there. That's what you should be taking from older comics. _{Yeah, I don't like Grim 'N Gritty (most of the time).}

Moving along. Rogue Rocket Red gets Booster Gold thinking about how everybody Just Happened to get together, and he guesses that this is more of Max Lord's manipulation. Quite literally, "Let's get the team back together". Everybody is like "LOL, wat", but Max actually responds. This is pretty great actually. It's nice to see Smart Booster. Booster's one of those characters that all the other characters and sometimes the audience thinks of as stupid and selfish. He's not, really. It's stuff like this that makes Booster a great character, and it is a great character moment. Kudos.

I figured out why I'm still reading this comic. Because I honestly want to see what happens next in the Booster Gold - Max Lord relationship. I might not like this title all the time (this was one of its better issues), but I actually want to see what happens next. So good for it.

Moving on.

Batman: Streets of Gotham
Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen have been putting out a pretty solid comic. It's not Batwoman: Detective Comics OMG MUST HAVE NEXT ISSUE NOW, but I always smile when I pick it up.

Art first. I like Nguyen's art, but I feel like he's better when he works with his watercolours like when he does the covers. But mostly because his watercolour stuff is frikkin amazing. I mean seriously, this guy gets colour. Once, just once, I'd like to see him do an entire issue like that.
This particular cover isn't the best he's done. Compared to some of his others, it's rather bland.

I will also give him a high-five for not sexualizing the Carpenter. The comic never takes time from the story to give us needless fanservice, and I appreciate that.

Dini is a writer that writes a satisfying comic. The arc ends well, with a good conclusion. It's almost a little boring in that I can't really say anything about it! If I had started these reviews earlier I would have plenty to say about the new character Abuse (mostly good things), but for this it's just... Yeah. I do really like Carpenter. Dini seems to be developing how the villains work behind the scenes. First with the guy who buys the hideouts, and now the girl who builds the deathtraps and things. THat's pretty fantastic.

I'm not really going to say anything about the Manhunter backup, but I'll probably commit internet suicide in that I bought her first two trades and they didn't really suit me at all. I didn't like them. Her backups have been Meh for me.

Joe the Barbarian
Oh Grant Morrison. I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything I could say about you that anybody else hasn't already talked about. I am enjoying Joe the Barbarian, though.

I really, really like Sean Murphy's art. It is skritchy, but in a good way. Joe is absolutely adorable, as well as the other characters. His sense of style, the little details, the way he draws clothes, faces, backgrounds. There is nothing about this guy's art I don't like.
I'm also going to shout out to the colourist, Dave Steward 'cause that's some nice colour. The rendering is subtle and doesn't distract from the art, the way cool colours play with warm colours is very effective. It's colourful but subdued, and really helps with the mood.

People, be nice to the colourists. Especially the good ones.

Plot now. This issue was interesting. It moved forward the uh, not-real plot forward. There's a couple of brief moments that touch on Joe's reality, including one moment where it almost seems like characters from the not-real world entered Joe's Reality for a split second. This title is confusing, but Grant Morrison is good at doing that in a way that works. Other than that, I don't really have much to comment on.

Parody sketch of the week!


_{I've been, uh, playing a lot of Team Fortress 2.}