Let’s start off with this: I am a huge Sam Kieth fan - HUGE! - love the guy’s work on just about everything. Further, I am a huge Batman and Lobo fan. Even further, I am a huge Simon Bisley fan.
So let’s see what we’ve got here: Sam Kieth doing his best Simon Bisley (which is pretty damned good) on a Lobo and Batman story (Deadly Serious) in which hot chicks are turned into hot chicks who smoke, drink, and kill people (what we on Earth call “strippers”) - no-brainer, right? You’da thunk it.
But Batman/Lobo Deadly Serious doesn’t just fall flat, it fraggin’ blows!
I am basing this on just the first 10+ pages of the first installment because, honestly, that’s all I could stomach!
Kieth is a far better artist than writer, but even his worst on Maxx (which had no real plot, dialogue, or anything else in the way of writing - it was a quintessential Image title) was better than this. I mean, Bats is told in the first panel that he will be “...transported to a spacecraft 7.2 miles from Earth...” (actual dialogue) and [panel 2] “...it is done...” (again, actual dialogue): that’s how the story begins. This is page 1.
So much for exposition.
In the next two pages, he meets a woman who seems pleasant enough. She explains how some kind of plague only affects the women, there is no authority, and nearly all the men are gone. The spacecraft is deserted, but for the two of them and her living PDA. In the next sequence, he sees Lobo and attacks him. They fight for about a page and a half. Then the pleasant-enough woman becomes infected and starts shooting a gaggle of innocent victims who appear literally from out of nowhere. Then she runs away. Again, so much for exposition - I mean, this is like page 5, guys!
Now, in more capable hands, this might have been a rollicking beginning - I mean, it’s Bats and Lobo, so we knew what we were in for, right? Unfortunately, Kieth just isn’t up to the task.
After this, we meet a small group of schoolchildren who are on a field trip of the second-level of the spaceship. Yeah, that’s about where I left-off.
Except that I didn’t: in the next sequence, Bats has not only found the security systems monitors, but has figured out how to read the alien-built device(s) to discover there’s "a commotion on level-three."
You getting this? I mean "bad" doesn't even begin to cover it; this is downright... I can't even call it "amateurish" without feeling like I'm insulting amateurs - it's that bad! And, so long as we’re being honest, the art isn’t even that good. It’s Sam Kieth doing a bad Simon Bisley poorly! I would say it looks like a rushed job (it does), but it’s more than that - it’s a bad job. I don’t know the story behind this particular deal, so I have no idea if he signed-on to do it or if he was recruited, but if it was a work-for-hire, you can tell it - and if it was a project Kieth submitted for approval, then shame on everyone involved!
Like I say, I love Sam Kieth and both the characters involved, and I have been looking forward to this one for several months now (blogged about it more than twice, too!), so maybe I am being harder on it than normal because I was so disappointed, but this really was a poor showing. Don’t waste your money. I really hate to be hard on this one, but I calls ‘em likes I sees ‘em, folks!
(I probably won’t even open the second issue until one of those cold, wet days when there’s absolutely nothing better to do... how sad is that?)
So let’s see what we’ve got here: Sam Kieth doing his best Simon Bisley (which is pretty damned good) on a Lobo and Batman story (Deadly Serious) in which hot chicks are turned into hot chicks who smoke, drink, and kill people (what we on Earth call “strippers”) - no-brainer, right? You’da thunk it.
But Batman/Lobo Deadly Serious doesn’t just fall flat, it fraggin’ blows!
I am basing this on just the first 10+ pages of the first installment because, honestly, that’s all I could stomach!
Kieth is a far better artist than writer, but even his worst on Maxx (which had no real plot, dialogue, or anything else in the way of writing - it was a quintessential Image title) was better than this. I mean, Bats is told in the first panel that he will be “...transported to a spacecraft 7.2 miles from Earth...” (actual dialogue) and [panel 2] “...it is done...” (again, actual dialogue): that’s how the story begins. This is page 1.
So much for exposition.
In the next two pages, he meets a woman who seems pleasant enough. She explains how some kind of plague only affects the women, there is no authority, and nearly all the men are gone. The spacecraft is deserted, but for the two of them and her living PDA. In the next sequence, he sees Lobo and attacks him. They fight for about a page and a half. Then the pleasant-enough woman becomes infected and starts shooting a gaggle of innocent victims who appear literally from out of nowhere. Then she runs away. Again, so much for exposition - I mean, this is like page 5, guys!
Now, in more capable hands, this might have been a rollicking beginning - I mean, it’s Bats and Lobo, so we knew what we were in for, right? Unfortunately, Kieth just isn’t up to the task.
After this, we meet a small group of schoolchildren who are on a field trip of the second-level of the spaceship. Yeah, that’s about where I left-off.
Except that I didn’t: in the next sequence, Bats has not only found the security systems monitors, but has figured out how to read the alien-built device(s) to discover there’s "a commotion on level-three."
You getting this? I mean "bad" doesn't even begin to cover it; this is downright... I can't even call it "amateurish" without feeling like I'm insulting amateurs - it's that bad! And, so long as we’re being honest, the art isn’t even that good. It’s Sam Kieth doing a bad Simon Bisley poorly! I would say it looks like a rushed job (it does), but it’s more than that - it’s a bad job. I don’t know the story behind this particular deal, so I have no idea if he signed-on to do it or if he was recruited, but if it was a work-for-hire, you can tell it - and if it was a project Kieth submitted for approval, then shame on everyone involved!
Like I say, I love Sam Kieth and both the characters involved, and I have been looking forward to this one for several months now (blogged about it more than twice, too!), so maybe I am being harder on it than normal because I was so disappointed, but this really was a poor showing. Don’t waste your money. I really hate to be hard on this one, but I calls ‘em likes I sees ‘em, folks!
(I probably won’t even open the second issue until one of those cold, wet days when there’s absolutely nothing better to do... how sad is that?)
1 comment:
Waaaaiiitttt. Maxx was devoid of plot? Keith is a bad writer?
Some of the earlier Maxx comics were Image crap, but the end of the series features really strong writing. Furthermore, Keith's writing on comics like "Friends of the Maxx" is flat out excellent. Keith treads real literary waters and questions things like masculine ideals.
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