Sunday Splash Page #398

"Riot," in Oh S#!t It's Kim & Kim #4, by Magdalene Visaggio (writer), Eva Cabrera (artist), Claudia Aguirre (colorist), Zakk Saam (letterer)

The 3rd, and thus far, last Kim and Kim adventure finds the "Fighting Kims" trying to be professionals. And failing miserably. Their boss has been hired to protect a famous painting, and sends the Kims to distract a renowned socialite art thief, so she won't steal it. They cook up a scheme to steal a rare recording of "Heaven is a Place on Earth" from Kim Q's dad, a very dangerous dude. It's supposed to be a fake theft that he lets them pull off, but Furious Quattro is a dick who still refers to his daughter by her pre-transition name and gender, so Kim never gets around to asking and they just steal it outright.

And get betrayed by the thief and dumped on a ship headed to a prison planet. Their eventual escape is messy, unplanned beyond Kim Q gaining enough control of the prisoner factions to make them riot, and only succeeds because Furious sent two of his guys - one of whom, Saar, was Kim Q's best friend as a kid - to rescue another of his agents (a talking corgi-man.) The Kims track down the thief, hoping to both recover the recording and rescue their boss, who got caught trying to retrieve the painting because the Kims failed to sufficiently distract said thief.

Given Xue was pretty into Kim D, who was also clearly into Xue, she probably should have just tried a marathon sex session as a distraction instead. Especially since the Kims fail. They get their asses kicked, don't recover the painting, and only walk out with their lives and the recording because El Scorcho (who Cabrera draws as either a pterodactyl-man or a dragon-man, though a name like "El Scorcho" suggests dragon), doesn't want to ruin his business arrangements with Furious by killing his kid. On the other hand, Saar is officially out of rope with Furious, so he's probably dead. Or in El Scorcho's clutches, which I assume is like being dead, but more painful.

In the second mini-series, Visaggio has Kim D's shitty ex ask what she's doing, living like this. She always had plans and goals. Now she's living in a space van, bumming money off her parents. It feels like Visaggio ramps that up, teasing the end of the partnership, as Kim D is pretty pissed at how things are going, and specifically pissed at Kim Q by the end of this story. Understandably so. Most of their problems are a result of the fact Kim Q not only can't get a handle on her impulses or temper, she doesn't even try.

When they're looking for Xue at a casino, Kim Q gets in a fight with a guy because she figures he's cheating. He is, but it causes a huge scene when they're supposed to avoid that, and means he picks a fight with her when he spots her in the crowd aboard El Scorcho's ship. She can't even pretend to get along with her father long enough for this one job. Furious is a complete dick to be sure, and we get some flashbacks to Kim's childhood that explain a lot of her attitude - the entitlement, the aggression, the inability to know when to let something drop - courtesy of her upbringing, but his cooperation was necessary for their plan, and she not only didn't get it, she didn't tell Kim D she didn't get it until they were already pulling the theft.

She pushes Kim D to use necromancy to rescue their boss, even knowing that's a really unpleasant experience, then completely fails to uphold her part of the deal by getting in the fight with the cheater. Not great, making her friend deal with unhappy parts of their past, when she failed utterly to do the same, putting them in this circumstance to begin with. Especially when you then lose all the fights you're getting them into, costing them money, hurting their rep, putting targets on their heads, getting other friends killed.

Basically, Kim Q comes off as a terrible friend in this story, the worst of kind of self-involved jerk, and Visaggio would have to do something pretty big to reverse that trend if we ever got another adventure for these two.

Sunday Splash Page #295

 

"Another Bad Break-Up," in Kim and Kim: Love is a Battlefield #1, by Magdalene Vissagio (writer), Eva Cabrera (artist), Claudia Aguirre (colorist), Zakk Saam (letterer)

Released the year after the initial Kim and Kim mini-series, Love is a Battlefield picks up with the bounty hunters still living paycheck to paycheck (if that), but with the opportunity for a big score. All they have to do is recover a stolen data chip (that's encoded as a virus in a guy's blood, weird dimension they live in.)

Oh, and not let the blood sample get immediately stolen by Kim D.'s shitty ex-girlfriend. But what are the odds of that happening?

With that relationship disaster established in the first issue, the remaining three are the Fighting Kims (apparently Kim D. came around on the name) trying to find the shitty ex and their payday, plus a lot of arguing about their poor choices in relationships. Because, in addition to Kim D. getting hoodwinked by her ex-girlfriend, Kim Q. has been hooking up with an old, I don't know, they were friends before Kimko's transition, but then hated each other at some point?

There's a lot of finger-pointing and harsh words, which Vissagio and Cabrera break up with bar fights and giant robots. Kim D. gets angry and broods, Kim Q. gets angry and starts random fights. It keeps things from getting monotonous with the leads defending their bad decisions.

Although the thing I really notice is the sense that the other characters are advancing their lives, while the Kims are kind of stuck in neutral. In the five years since the break-up, Laz has gone from doing transport protection working to stealing the kind of codes you implant in someone's RNA for protection, on behalf of massive space-terrorist groups calling themselves the Adversary. The Kims' friend Kathleen just bought herself a space freighter as another step in a plan to become a mercenary queen.

Meanwhile, the Kims are still living out of their (barely) space-worthy VW bus as often as not, scrambling for a payday Kim Q. will want to blow on a voice modulator for their cat. Kim Q. seems pretty satisfied, but Laz describes Kim D. as having a whole plan for her life, and the reader's got to wonder how well the plan is progressing. That comes to a head in the 3rd - and thus far, final - mini-series, but we won't see that one for about two years.

Sunday Splash Page #294

 

"Brand Issues," in Kim and Kim #1, by Magdalene Visaggio (writer), Eva Cabrera (penciler/inker), Claudia Aguirre (colorist), Zakk Saam (letterer)

I did a more lengthy review of the first Kim and Kim mini-series 2.5 years ago, but in short: Kimber Dantzler and Kimiko Quatro are bounty hunters. They're not unskilled, but they are unlucky, as all their bounties go awry somehow. So they're usually broke, either living out of their interstellar capable VW Bus, or having Kim D. resort to asking her parents for money. Kim Q's dad is a lot better off financially, but there's a whole other mess of issues there.

Visaggio takes what feels like an odd approach with the story, in that most of it involves the Kims trying to help a guy with a large bounty on his head return to his home dimension, rather than turn him in for the bounty. But the actual conclusion to that is sort of handwaved by having the Kims explain to two other friends that they woke up the next morning and everyone was just gone, so they assume mission accomplished. There's some fallout from the whole thing still to contend with, but it's such an abrupt resolution.

That they're usually broke makes more sense in that context, however. They careen from one thing to the next, and on the rare occasion Kim D. comes up with a plan, either she botches it, or Kim Q. gets impatient and starts a bar fight.

Aguirre keeps the book in bright colors, so everything's vivid, and Cabrera's art is both expressive enough to handle a quiet conversation between Kim D and her presumed-dead aunt, or a loud argument between Kim Q. and whoever she happens to be picking a fight with at that moment. The art's not grounded in trying to look photo-realistic, which is a good thing when the setting includes sandworms, octopus people and a Franken-Ape.

Bounty Hunting Is Both More and Less Fun Than You Think

Gonna be one of those kinds of weeks, huh?

Kim And Kim: This Glamorous High-Flying Rock Star Life is the first of currently three mini-series about a pair of space bounty hunters, Kim D. and Kim Q (that's her with the guitar). I've seen comparisons to Dirty Pair, in the amount of immense destruction and chaos they leave in their wake, but I tend to agree with the blurb on the back of the trade that mentions Cowboy Bebop. These two are always broke or nearly broke, and none of their plans and schemes ever seem to go how they hoped. They've each got pasts, both of which Magdalene Visaggio reveals pieces of as the story goes along, and while Kim Q. frequently irritates Kim D., they've got each other's backs.

That, and their spaceship is a beat up hunk of junk. It's basically a VW bus with wings.

The plot is them trying to make some money by going after an extremely high-profile bounty, and getting into all kinds of problems as a result. Unexpectedly, Visaggio kind of lets that thread go with an issue left, the Kims relating the story to a couple of friends and admitting they fell asleep, and everyone was gone when they woke up. So they just assume everything worked out. One of their friends, who works as an assassin, lampshades that being a mistake, but it doesn't seem to come to anything here. Actually, it's been a couple years since I read the third mini-series (Oh Shit, It's Kim and Kim!), but I can't remember there having been fallout from it yet.

I think the plot is mostly incidental, as a way to introduce parts of the Kims' backstories (Kim D. comes from a line of probate necromancers, Kim Q. is the estranged daughter of some asshole that runs a big merc crew), and highlight their characters. Kim D. is a little calmer, more practical, a bit more insecure. When she tries to use necromancy to track down a lead, she's constantly convinced she's gonna screw it up. Which she does, but that attitude can't help.

 

Kim Q. is the one who causes problems. Starts fights, spends all their money on booze, refuses to accept jobs from her father on principle, but encourages Kim to beg her mom to cover their rent. Honestly, she seems like a horrible friend, but I guess she's fun to be around, and she likes to hit things with a guitar. Can't find too many partners like that, I'm sure.

Cabrera's has a flexible, somewhat cartoonish style that fits with the high emotions and occasional weird crap the Kims encounter. Her linework is kept pretty simple. There's not a lot of needless little lines, which probably fits well with Claudia Aguirre's colors. They aren't blindingly bright, although it is a colorful book. Kim D.'s pink Kalashnikov is eye-catching, but not to the point it's distracting. The dark gloom and shadows are saved for when it actually fits the scene. But a lot of the colors are solid, not much in gradients, so lighter cross-hatching or whatever would probably get swamped anyway. 

Most of the characters' fashion senses could be easily described as "show off your abs". The men and women, Cabrera's equal opportunity on that score. It's a like a commercial for The Gap. But given it's a bunch of people living the "glamorous, rock star life", it and the colors, make perfect sense.

 

Plus, as a product of the mid-2000s comic blogowhatchamafloogle, I am obligated to be excited about any comic that has an evil scientist with a body made of famous monkeys, who makes robot gorilla henchmen.