Hi folks, welcome to ARCHIE G’s. I’m your waiter, Raoul.
Here at ARCHIE G’s, we don’t think you can make a dependable Pull List decision based on the first serving of a comic. Publishers throw everything they’ve got at a first issue: promotions, gimmick covers, etc. And speculators? Sheesh, don’t get me started on speculators. Because of stuff like that, first issue sales figures are always bloated.
You need to make your decision based on the SECOND issue, because it will give you a better idea what the series will be like, issue-in, issue-out.
Which is why I ask:
You Want 2nds?
TODAY’S SPECIAL: Sally of the Wasteland #2
It’s very considerate when a publisher puts a word in the title that clues you in on the book’s true nature. And –SPOILER ALERT– I am not referring to “SALLY”, “OF”, “THE” or “LAND”.
Somewhere in this comic are buried a couple of mildly interesting ideas, but no one is going to have the patience to exhume them. This is a post-apocalyptic book that makes me kind of wish the Apocalypse would hurry up and get here so creators would stop speculating about it.
But before serving up the writing, let’s start with an appetizer: the art.
For a comic with multiple face-stabbings, chest-puncturings, and testicle-maimings, it is remarkably lifeless. It has no energy in it’s movement. And the faces and bodies are too similar. Any time you thank God for the colorist making it possible to tell characters apart, it’s a bad sign.
There is one exception. One of the characters is a bald-faced cry for attention: “RON PERLMAN! Hey Ron Perlman! I sure look like you, don’t I? I bet this would make a swell movie for you to star in! Maybe you should call your pal Uwe Boll and see if he wants to spend a couple of weeks in the Czech Republic to knock this baby out!”
Maybe the plan was to use the comic as a storyboard for this Perlman/Boll Blockbuster (coming soon to Cinemax around 3:00am, I would guess), but there’s not a cinematographer on the planet that would be so boring and repetitive with their camera angles. Even limb-hacking and blood-spurting gets stale when you see them the same way EVERY SINGLE TIME, guys!
There’s some bad continuity here, too. A choker vanishes from panel to panel. Heads turn at impossible angles they never dreamed of in Japanese horror flicks.
I do have to give Tazio Bettin credit: he draws great tattoos. Keep those in your portfolio, bud.
You know how sometimes you say things that sounded WAY better in your head? It applies to comic book writing, as well.
For instance, the main character, the aforementioned Sally of the aforementioned Wasteland. What can I tell you about her?
Nothing.
I take that back. Two things: She’s horny and she has dark hair.
Sally has 56 lines of dialogue and not one of them makes the slightest bit of sense. Everything Sally says is supposed to be a funny one-liner…EVERY FREAKING ONE! Except the one word balloon where she tells the dude she’s trying to bang about how bandits murdered her parents when she was nine. I would call that a break from her character but Victor Gischler hasn’t given her any character to break.
Let me put it another way. You can edit out all 56 of those lines of dialogue, and it wouldn’t affect this story one iota. AND THIS IS YOUR TITLE CHARACTER!
That is a bad, BAD sign folks.
One more thing..
I’m sorry, but in light of recent events, beheadings are not all that funny. To be fair, I’m sure it was probably too late for them to do anything about it in this case. But even then, two of them? On back-to-back pages? That’s a bit much, don’t you think? Especially when one head flies across the page screaming “AAAARRRGGGHH!” (despite having severed vocal chords; Kudos, nameless pirate scum), and another is held aloft by his triumphant executioner. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt ands chalk it up to bad timing. I’m just warning you, it’s jarring.
I give this one ONE SOGGY FRENCH FRY.
And don’t forget my tip. Ain’t nobody gettin’ rich here.
