By Sam Christopher
We’ll start off here with the end of David Tischman and Franco Urru’s tale of a newly ensouled Angelus in Angel: Barbary Coast #3. In this issue we learn the answer to the age-old question of what happens to the vampire who chases a dragon through an earthquake and is confronted by a demon and sunlight. Of course, we all already know what happens: said vampire falls in love with his “race’s” greatest enemy and gets his own tv show. Seriously, this is a very good story that could actually have stood a couple more installments for fermentation. The dragon thread is kind of rushed and I would have liked to have seen the W&H thread made a little more explicit. Well worth reading, though, either in this form or when the tpb comes out.
You want the other side of the coin? The vamp with a soul who asked for it? Okay, we have Spike: The Devil You Know #1. Writer Bill Williams obviously knows his way around these characters, as he should given that he is scripting the backups in the Angel ongoing series at the moment (hint, hint). I know I’ve kind of fallen out of love with that story but just because I was never enamored of Mefisto in Onyx doesn’t mean that Harlan Ellison can’t write. Also, artist Chris Cross does some very good work here, something I never thought I’d say after hating his work completely on Firestorm–the first thing I ever saw of his, I think (although it does seem to me there was something he did recently that I liked better). Point is Spike looks and sounds exactly like Spike, Illyria has just the right mix of haunted memory and detached aloofness… the side characters to the piece would have fit perfectly on the tv shows. And the idea of miniature Hellmouths? Outstanding!
And speaking of Williams’ stint on Angel (which was not at all where the hint was taking you above but I’ll use it anyway), check out the latest in Angel #34. The backup tale, “My Dinner with Gunn”, by frontman Bill Willingham and the aforementioned Bill Williams with good art by Elena Casagrande, is better than it has been, with Eddie talking things over with Charles Gunn before offering Gunn the “honorable way out” for his sins. But this still pales in comparison with the main story. Oh. My. GOD! Spike to Laura Weathermill: “You’re supposed to be the new miss know-it-all, right? Replacing the last girl who had the job? His name was Wesley. Maybe you knew him?” And that’s not even the best part of their conversation! Sex everywhere… not a pon farr reference but the threat of one… and the intro to the next bad “guy”. Amazing, amazing stuff here. If Incredible Hercules hadn’t ended this may have beaten it out anyway in the list of monthly faves.
The next bloodsucker on the list, Dracula #2 by Marvel, has some serious problems. First, I just have a difficult time looking past the fact that this used to be in black-and-white, it was originally made to be seen in black-and-white, and it just seems to me as I read it that something has been lost in the translation from black-and-white. It’s like watching the colorized version of Night of the Living Dead—may everyone with a hand in that be assailed by flesh-eating ghouls. It just ain’t right. Second, of course, is that as good as this is—and, folks, anything done by Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano just cannot be bad—it falls a little flat after Dynamite’s recent incredible adaptation of the novel to comics form. So, this is good… but there are things about it—mostly things that have nothing to do with this story itself—that are definitely to its detriment. I will say that, for younger readers who haven’t been exposed to the greatness that was the Mighty Marvel Magazine, this is a good piece of nostalgia despite the colorization problem.
The She-Devil with a Sword stands toe-to-toe—or, rather, sword to spear—with Odin in Red Sonja: Wrath of the Gods #5. This is a rather obvious end to a kind of inventive story in which Sonja meets the Norse Gods. Here we meet an Odin who has been out of touch for a long time, a god now roused to anger by his children turning on him. He says. In this story, the Greek legend of sons rising up to kill and take over for their fathers is transferred to the Norse as Thor is said to be destined to murder Odin and rule in his stead. Loki’s here, too… Really, if you’ve been reading you need to see the end here and if you haven’t it is worth picking up the tpb. Funniest thing here, though, is the end, where Sonja turns down the offer of marriage to a king, saying that she’d be bored to death ruling a kingdom. So speaks the woman soon to be Queen Sonja.
Finally, IDW presents a very special adaptation by Joe R. and John L. Lansdale in Robert Bloch’s Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper #1. Suppose your father worked for Scotland Yard while the Ripper killings were happening. And suppose your father had a theory that no one would believe but it fit all the facts of the case and even some other sets of killings thereafter. Suppose your father died having not gotten his man and you had taken up the chase where he left off. And suppose the trail had taken you to 1950s Chicago, where a new series of killings was occurring. Finally, suppose only one person, a newswoman everyone thinks of as slightly nutty, believes you. I know, I know, it would be cool if her name was Kolchak, but… I have to say that I thought I had read this story before but looking at this ish I’m not so sure. This is a classic of sf, and I find it difficult to believe I haven’t read it before. But maybe I haven’t, maybe I’m thinking of Bloch’s Ripper tale for Dangerous Visions. Anyway, this is a very good start to the story with wonderfully appropriate artwork by Kevin Colden.
