It's David Hahn Day! I mean, I don't think it's his birthday. It could be I guess, but both comics today were drawn by him, so according to the Blog Constitution, that counts.
The flashback portion shows us that Ortensia woke up after the guys who killed her father tried to sacrifice her. She was not dead, or at least not dead dead, and they were all crispy fried. Then a woman named Sarah, who looks like a rather desiccated Pilgrim found her. And that's all we get on her backstory.
The main part of the issue is her first meeting with Alexander, 15 years later, when she's hired to kill the "Chupacabra" feasting on some ranchers goats. Surprise, it's a very lonely for Revolutionary War soldier turned vampire! Alexander is OK with dying, if he can just have a conversation first. Ortensia reluctantly agrees, he offers his origin as having gotten lost marching in the snow and being found by a peculiar woman. Who then bit him on the neck. He escaped, but now he's a vampire. Who only feeds on animals, mind you.
It's interesting that Hahn gives Alexander vacant white eyes, except in the page where he's feeding on the goats and they're black voids with a red dot in the center. But for the woman who rescued/turned Alexander, Hahn gives her eyes that are entirely black. Is that some signal as to the difference in their status? She's a full vampire, he's not? Or just a representation that she's killed and fed on many people, and Alexander has refrained. One tainted by their choices, the other not.
Long story short, Ortensia feels kinship with someone who was turned into something without a choice, and gives him the opportunity to work for her. Or stay in the cave in what's left of his ragged clothes. And the rest is. . . the first four issues of this mini-series. So far. It feels like Southard left enough space to return to some day. Sarah's an enigma to be sure, and what happened after Ortensia and Alex moved to her property in Oregon is another question.
Maybe we'll get some more some day. That'd be nice.
Impossible Jones is a hero with stretchy powers, which may or may not come from an other-dimensional alien parasite/symbiote she picked up after being caught in some sort of incident with a quantum generator. Of course, she was caught up in it because she's actually a thief named Belle, who was helping a disgruntled employee of the CEO of a tech company (who is also a super-criminal, possibly with snake powers) rob said company. Belle thinks her crew betrayed her, but at present, the person meddling with the controls of the machine she was trapped in is unknown. Although her buddy Jimmy is definitely acting jumpy.
Even for the comic being 28 pages, Kesel and Hahn fit quite a bit in there. Belle's origin and her crew. We see at least three other costumed heroes and villains each, and here about a couple more. There are all sorts of hints to rivalries and long-running problems, and at least one strange hero legacy, called "Persephone", that seems to be carried by a person for one year, then passed to someone else.
The hows and the whys are unknown, but I like that Kesel writes it as though this is a universe in progress we've stepped into. The story doesn't stop to explain all the backstory, or this would just be an expository issue. We've got Christmas-themed villainy, betrayals, rivalries, all sorts of stuff going that we hopefully get to tease out as the story goes along.
Kesel's inks soften Hahn's artwork a fair bit. Characters' faces aren't as sharply defined. Ortensia has a jawline that could cut roast, while Belle's is a bit rounder. They have a similar shape to the nose, but Kesel emphasizes different aspects of it than Hahn. Hahn's shadows are heavier, too. thicker and darker than Kesel's.
It fits the characters and their stories, much like Avina and Cody's respective color work does. Impossible Jones is a much brighter book, appropriate for what feels like maybe a Bronze Age super-hero book. Midnight Western Theatre tends to darker colors, but also more solid colors. Less shading. It's Western horror. Even if one of the heroes is a vampire, there's still right and wrong. The ones who hurt, and the ones who help. Belle is a costumed hero sometimes, but she's not above keeping the loot she kept from being stolen for herself. In a bit of a grey area there. Not always bad, not always good.
No comments:
Post a Comment