Reviews: The Vault #1

The Vault is yet another in Image's growing stable of horror-themed titles. Not that I'm complaining; if there's one thing that Image Comics does right, it's horror-themed comics. (If there's one thing it's done wrong in this department, it's canceling the wonderfully hysterical Golly!, but that has nothing to do with this review.)

The very first thing that captured my attention with The Vault is the artwork, which is more than just reminiscent of Rick Veitch's - some might call it "copycat." But that's not fair to artist Garry Gastonny, whose opening sequence is absolutely beautiful, and shows clear signs of Barry Windsor-Smith's influence. Pretty good influences for a comic book of this nature... or any nature, for that matter. Still, I was tempted to get out some of my old Epic Magazines and compare panels.

The writing is equally stellar, and everyone in the game should take a look at pages 7-9 (digital copy may be differently numbered than the print version) to see how storytelling should work in this medium. Even without the short word introduction, Sam Sarkar establishes a classic B-movie feel early-on, but the introduction lets educated readers know that he's done his homework. Sarkar's walking a tightrope between cheese and a deeper story, but he manages - excepting the names of literally everything, which beat the readers about the head and face and cheapen the story.

What really makes The Vault #1 work is the attention to background, in the story as a whole. Gastonny's background work is awesome, and his close-ups are also well-rendered - though he struggles with basic figure drawing. Another weakness is balloon placement. There is an awful lot of dialogue in The Vault - some of which is unnecessary, most of which is exposition - and some of it gets muddled along the way. There is a total of two panels in the entire first issue that do not have any dialogue, and they are the only ones with less than one balloon (or maybe it just seemed that way).

This is where Sarkar drops the ball; while an interesting read, I have to reiterate: Comic books are not movies. There is some excellent characterization and handling of relationships between characters, but the most telling - and most convincing - of it could have been handled without any dialogue whatsoever.

Comic books are not movies. The Vault would make an excellent retro-B movie, but only Gastonny's artwork makes it a decent comic book. That takes about 12 hours to read.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011