Spent the weekend at my dad's, so expect a series of posts about older movies over the next several weeks. In the meantime, the lean weeks for new comics continue. One book last week, a first issue.
In 1899, there's something that looks like a man in a bowler hat and tie, roaming the Yukon wilds, killing people. A giant spider seems involved, somehow. Nettie Bridger doesn't know anything about that. What she knows is her preacher husband took their son up north with him to spread the Word (and get rich), came back alone, and had been doing his best to avoid her. So she set north to find Caleb, hiring an old trapper of the name Makepeace Thyme (did he just pick his name from whatever storefront signs he could actually read?) as a bodyguard of sorts.
She's having no luck in Dawson City, but an old prospector does eventually approach, saying he'd seen Caleb in a town called Brokehoof. Before they get there, something wipes out their sled dogs. The prospector starts calling wildly to someone before attacking Nettie and Moonpeace, then getting a bullet to the skull from a Mountie. Who tells Nettie Caleb's been dead a month. Welcome to town.
Nettie says, right before everything goes wrong, she can't conceive of any interest in anything but finding her son. This in a rather brusque response to Moonpeace trying to make conversation about his wife. I would say it probably pays to be more polite to the person you expect to protect you, but I guess they didn't have manners in 1899. Anyway, now she knows the fate of her son, if not the details, so I guess she's going to be at a loose end for an issue or two.
Beyond that, I don't know. We haven't seen more than a long-range glimpse of Brokehoof, so it's hard to say what the town will be like. Gold rush towns in Westerns tend to be wild, overpriced crapholes, but this is one where the town is menaced by some strange thing, so fear's going to be an element. And Nettie does not seem prepared for this sort of thing at all, and I'm not sure there's really anyone she can rely on.
Gooden has a sort of busy art style. Lot of little marks on the faces, shadows under the eyes. Reminds me a little of Denys Cowan, but the linework isn't as firm. Jawlines and faces aren't as pronounced as with Cowan (although I guess with Cowan I don't know how much to attribute to Sienkiewicz). Either way, Gooden's work does give the characters a definite look of wear. Nettie shows the least of it, but she's also the one who has been living in a city (such as it is) until just recently.
Duke's colors are sort of washed out, especially in the scenes in the wilderness. Duke uses a shade of blue that seems to suck the color away from everything else. Like the cold is leeching it away, or maybe that the prospectors are pouring all of themselves into this place. The exceptions are blood, and gold. They aren't colored brilliantly, no neon hues, but they still stand out against their surroundings in a way nothing else does.
No comments:
Post a Comment