What I Bought 5/8/2021 - Part 1

Our governor, in his endless brilliance, announced out of the blue last week all state employees will return to the office on the 17th. No remote work options will be considered. This after six weeks of our bosses telling us maybe we'd be in the office by July, and that they're working on remote work options. Never mind a lot of people still won't be fully vaccinated. Tomorrow is 2 weeks since the second shot for me, and I got the first shot the second day I was eligible. To say nothing of all the people in this state who won't get vaccinated at all. But sure, business as usual.

Anyway, here's a couple of first issues.

Jenny Zero #1, by Dave Dwonch (writer/letterer), Brockton McKinney (writer), Magenta King (artist), Megan Huang (color artist) - That kaiju's gonna be lucky if it didn't step on a used needle.

Jenny was part of Japan's giant monster fighting agency, the daughter of the biggest (literally) hero, and she got discharged for currently unspecified reasons. She moved to California, has a publicist/hotel manager that looks after her, and spends her time drinking and taking all kinds of drugs. The giant monsters are moving beyond Japan's borders, so her uncle asks her to fight one headed her way. She's not happy, but does it (while drunk), and while in the process of being carried away by a giant remora, is shot and manifests the same "growing giant-sized" powers her dad apparently had.

I guess the idea is everyone always compared her to her dad, and minus his super-powers, she didn't measure up. That got old, so she decided to stop trying? Either living for herself as much as possible, or trying to rebel as obviously as possible. Her uncle, who King draws about as square-chinned and lantern-jawed as possible, says she's bringing shame to her family. Which, you know, always a good approach to take when asking for a favor.

Seriously, if you flipped the guy upside-down I'm pretty sure you could build scale-models of famous landmarks out of toothpicks and spit on the underside of his face. Overall, King's artwork varies as the situation requires. It seems to get looser, more blacks during the battle at the end, while it's busier, with thinner lines in the first half of the book where there's a lot of talking. Jenny looks ragged, sweaty and tired. Her clothes don't look like they fit terribly well. She's not taking care of herself and her friend's efforts are mostly for naught (boy, do I know what that's like), and the art reflect it.

 

I did raise an eyebrow at the notion that if left to our own devices, the U.S. will simply bomb the monster and cause a lot of collateral damage. Not that it's an inaccurate reading, I'm just not sure having a giant person fight the monster will be all that much less destructive. I'm seen a lot of animes. Fights between giant things break stuff.

You Promised Me Darkness #1, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Anabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Not the cover I ended up with, but it's nice and foreboding.

The issue is narrated by someone called Sage. They're over a hundred, and one of the people who gained powers when Halley's Comet flew past in 1910. There's a lot in there, and Sage's thoughts seem a little scattered, but the most critical part seems to be there's a cataclysm coming in two weeks, and involves a pair of siblings. A boy who creates fire, and a girl who pulls you into your nightmares. 

I thought that's what alcohol was for. 

There's a son of a satanist who can steal other powers closing in on them, and he, plus the song "Gangam Style", are going to somehow destroy everything. Or maybe it's a coincidence that song debuts on the important day (July 15, 2012). Connelly draws PSY so that he reminds me of Kim Jong-Un. Maybe it's just the hair? 

Like I said, Sage doesn't seem an entirely reliable narrator. They've got people looking for the siblings, Son of a Satanist Preacher Man has a bunch of zombified lawyers after them, there's a giant Doberman in the city. I am unclear on whether Sage means it's large for a Doberman, or large like it's the size of a house. I guess if it was the latter it wouldn't be so difficult to find, but it apparently can talk, so maybe it can turn invisible, too.

 

I wonder if Connelly is going to stick with Sage as narrator, or switch between characters. I can only hope for the latter, because Sage is kind of annoying. They don't have the Bendis stammering tic, but there's a lot of random "Yikes!", or "Oops!" in there. Example: 'I don't know why sometimes I make promises I'm not sure I can keep, Yikes!' Sage is probably a good character to use for exposition in the sense they've been around a while and know a lot. Their thought process means they can jump from topic to topic without it seeming like the author is trying to info-dump. It's like talking to a grandparent where one story about the old days segues into the next and then the next.

The art is all black-and-white, and I'd say the black dominates. In some panels it works, where faces stand out sharply. The panel of the mushroom cloud, where it's in white, against a black backdrop and mostly black city? That works pretty well. In others, I can hardly tell what I'm supposed to be looking at. The first panel where we see Sage, they're on a balcony at the bottom of the page, and it's hard to tell it's supposed to be a person and not just a sculpture like the ones on either side of Sage. I can't figure out what's going on with Sebastian's (fire boy) hair at all. Is it long, is it standing up, is it constantly windblown? Does he have a white streak like Rogue, or is that smoke wafting from his head because he's always a little on fire?

Of the two books, You Promised Me Darkness is the one that intrigues more, but it's also the one that's more likely to put me off stylistically.