ADVANCED REVIEW: Cemetery Beach #1 by Warren Ellis & Jason Howard

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Cemetery Beach #1 is due out Sept. 12.

By Zack Quaintance — Right from the start, Cemetery Beach by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard lets you know it’s a wild affair, very much unlike the team’s previous book, Trees. It does this with a set of instructions on the inside cover, starting with: 1. This book is valuable. Do not lose it. Whereas Trees was high concept sci-fi intermingled with commentary on social and cultural issues, Cemetery Beach is high concept sci-fi delivered via raucous adventure, steeped in shock, danger, and lunacy—you know, the good stuff.

The book’s front/inside cover starts establishing all that before readers hit the first panel. On top of that first instruction, there’s more plus also imagery that evokes escape, colonialism, Black Hawk helicopters, and early space travel. When the first panel does arrive, we launch straight into our exposition heavy yet very entertaining opening scene, in which Ellis pens some of his pithiest dialogue in recent memory. We learn in 1920 a group of industrialists and scientists found and operated a method to travel off-world. They built a colony, and our hero is on that colony now doing reconnaissance for Earth...that’s as far into the plot as I need to go here.

As you can see, this book is imaginative. It’s also light by recent Ellis standards, which feels like an odd way to describe a book with this much murder but here we are. The high-concept Ellis ideas are still here, as is the world-building. What sets Cemetery Beach apart from recent Ellis output (think Trees, Karnak, The Wild Storm, etc.) is a lighter energy and gripping plot from our start (more on that soon).

Howard’s artwork is also outstanding, a bit more kinetic than what we saw through much of trees, but just as clear and interesting. This first issue has a necessarily claustrophobic feel through most of it, seeing we start within a Mysterious Torture Shitbox, as our hero puts it. We do get a quick glimpse of the larger world, though, and I’m anxious to see more in future issues when the adventure presumably takes us to new corners of this colony.

The book’s clearest strength, however, is the mastery with which it takes a complex plot and gives us an absolutely perfect amount of information to engage with, to not feel disoriented, and to root for our protagonists. This balance, to me, is key to all great #1 issues. Creators must obviously avoid making readers feel like they’re having info forced on them, but they must also orient us within the story and make us care about characters, otherwise the cliffhanger at a first issue’s end won’t be compelling. Ellis and Howard nail all of that so hard with Cemetery Beach.

Overall: A masterful debut issue from a veteran creative team. Ellis and Howard’s Cemetery Beach #1 puts vast thematic and conceptual depth beneath a fast-paced and deceptively simple exterior, one loaded with quips and kinetically-drawn action scenes. BUY BUY BUY this comic and enjoy. 9.5/10

For more comic book reviews, check out our review archives.

Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

REVIEW: Green Arrow #43 by Julie & Shawna Benson, Javier Fernandez, John Kalisz, & Deron Bennett

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As a long-time Green Arrow fan, I am absolutely freaking out about Alex Maleev doing covers for this book.

By Zack Quaintance — Green Arrow #43 starts a new chapter for Oliver Queen and company (heh), one written by sisters Julie and Shawna Benson and illustrated by Javier Fernandez. That new team follows an all-time great Green Arrow run by Benjamin Percy with artists Juan Ferreyra and Otto Schmidt. This is actually the second issue of Green Arrow for the Bensons, who teamed with artist Carmen Nunez Carnero on Green Arrow Annual #2 (a No Justice tie-in) in May.

Phew. Now that introductions are finished, let’s get to it...so, like, is this comic still good?

In a word, yes. Green Arrow #43 is a good comic and a great tone-setter for a new run, one that makes a few things clear: Black Canary is going nowhere (and moving in!!), Roy Arsenal Harper is a big part of Ollie’s life, and DC Comics is committed to Green Arrow as perhaps the central lynchpin of its shared universe, a status first seeded in No Justice. In other shared continuity news, Roy also mentions Sanctuary (of Tom King’s upcoming Heroes in Crisis book), which Ollie is presently unaware of, although one expects that to change...

Anyway, those are all big picture story strokes. Green Arrow at its best, however, is a book that lives in smaller moments, in pretty bird pet names and the dichotomy of a family-monied corporate exec dual-lifeing it as a bleeding heart crusader. Thankfully, issue #43 takes aim at the endearing minutiae and nails its target dead-on (arrow joke, get it?…sorry). From panel to panel, this book brims with small but telling characterization: Ollie donning ear guards before going down to see Canary, the banter between Roy-Ollie-Dinah over chilli, Ollie’s posture and demeanor and cool-boss-guy garb at his office—it’s all just so quintessentially Oliver Queen.

Nailing the characterization was something Percy did incredibly well (he brought back the goatee!), and as such this transition to a new team is as smooth as an expertly-nocked arrow slicing through the air toward a bullseye (sorry again!). Fernandez’s clean linework and frenetic action sequences are also a treat, and the Alex Maleev covers bring a fantastic savagery to these proceedings before we even hit page one. The emerald archer, in other words, seems to be in good hands.

Oh! A closing thought...what if the box Martian Manhunter gave Ollie that can destroy the Justice League (the one Ollie gives Roy directions to as an insurance policy...should something happen to me) factors into Heroes in Crisis? That box is the Chekhov’s gun of the DC Universe right now...it’s obviously going off by act three.  

Overall: The Bensons and Javier Fernandez pull-off the difficult double task of redirecting Green Arrow’s larger plot while keeping the book’s characters grounded in the telling moments that marked Ben Percy’s run. This is a great jumping on point for new/returning readers plus a smooth transition for those who never left. 9.0/10

For more comic book and movie reviews, check out our review archives here.

Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

ADVANCED REVIEW: Hot Lunch Special #1 by Eliot Rahal, Jorge Fornes, & Taylor Esposito

There is a very personal feel to this story about mafia debts and severed appendages.

By Zack Quaintance — To join in on the food motif of Hot Lunch Special #1, let me start by saying this comic book feels like a main course of generational immigrant success story with a healthy side of Fargo-esque Midwestern crime noir, plus just a taste of a cautionary mafia power struggle. That’s a big meal (end of the food references, I swear), but it’s one that writer Eliot Rahal and artist Jorge Fornes serve up (damn it) expertly.

I liked Hot Lunch Special #1 quite a bit, and the main reason why is that there was a compelling level of realism here, one that at times made it feel almost like a memoir, although not quite because readers are never that far removed from a cops or crooks scene, or gasp a severed finger in a sandwich (that’s page 1, actually). Credit for this realism is, of course, due in large part to Rahal’s script, which I’m fairly certain was heavily informed by his familial history, but it’s also due to Fornes artwork, which strives for and achieves an immersive and intricate level of detail in even the book’s quietest moments—especially in the book’s quietest moments.

Fornes also does some great work with his colors, using them as so many masters have to make clear which scenes were set in the distant past for an older generation (one word: sepia) and which are in modern times.

There’s certainly a lot to pack into this debut, yet the book doesn’t fall victim to a frequent first issue pet peeve of mine: over exposition. No, there are no lengthy exchanges between two talking heads filling in how grandma met grandpa or how the family business first became entangled with organized crime (not a spoiler...all of that was in the solicit). Instead, Rahal and Fornes expertly careen this story through space and time, sparing us any over-inflation and keeping the narrative tight. It works so effectively that I halfway wondered if this was an oversized issued as I read. Put simply, a lot goes down.

But it’s all manageable and the hands of the creators go largely unnoticed. By the time the third act here came to its excellent cliffhanger of a conclusion, I felt like I knew who our main stakeholders were (especially the fantastic antagonist) and, more importantly, I felt like I had a reason to care about the story’s central family. I am—groan—ready for a second helping.  

Overall: Hot Lunch Special #1 takes a very personal generational story and mashes it up with  Fargo-esque Midwestern crime noir. It’s a quiet and grounded comic mostly, one that also feels taut and dangerous by its end. This first issue is promising, an excellent start for what may prove to be a unique book. 9.0/10

For more comic book and movie reviews, check out our review archives here.

Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

REVIEW: Her Infernal Descent #3 by Lonnie Nadler & Zac Thompson, Kyle Charles, Dee Cunniffe, & Ryan Ferrier

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By Zack Quaintance — Her Infernal Descent is the story of Lynn, a mother literally marching through hell in search of her recently-deceased family. Put simply, it's one unique comic. A loose retelling of Dante’s Inferno, it stars a fairly typical mom plus a host of dead celebrities, from Jimi Hendrix to Homer (Odyssey not Simpson) to Kafka, ironically serving as a judge.

This issue is three of five, and in it, the qualities that made the first two installments so interesting have been upped: dry humor, surreal encounters with departed artists, and the melancholy motivating Lynn to traverse literal hell. There’s quite a bit to be impressed with, both holistically as well as within this singular issue, but let’s start with the writing.

The duo of Lonnie Nadler and Zac Thompson are on the rise, catching much buzz with their work on Marvel’s Cable, taking over Valiant's Bloodshot, and writing the excellent body horror book Come Into Me. Although it’s early in their careers to brand them with a regular motif, I’d still say this book seems like a departure, at once under and overstated—understated with its characterization of Lynn and overstated with the absurd hell unfolding around her.

The cover of Her Infernal Descent #3 is an excellent summation of what this book's art does so well, juxtaposing the protagonist's outward normalcy with her madcap and macabre surroundings.

The mom-ness of our hero is so well done, especially in interactions with deceased members of the intelligentsia. She’s unimpressed but tolerant of William Blake yet thrilled to meet Agatha Christie. When Andy Warhol tells her he’s trying to be nice, she replies Try harder. She uses old school mom-typical expressions like Hey buster, Oh for Pete’s sake, or ...that time I smoked the danged reefer. Obviously these writers aren’t mothers, but they seem to be working hard to see and convey their own moms' perspectives. The result is a character who is utterly relatable.

The real heart of the book, however, is Lynn's regret over her lost loved ones. In this issue, hellions try to torture her with her own memories in a poignant spread that nearly brought me to tears. We also see Lynn recall that normal life had perhaps pushed her to drinking. Like the earlier charm, these tragedies are never belabored, and that's a credit to the scripting.

The visuals, of course, also deserve much credit. Kyle Charles and Dee Cunniffe are a versatile team, capable of both quiet emotions and of depicting hell. They bounce between these modes, often integrating them into shared environs. The cover to issue three is a great example. We see Lynn with her practical haircut and dress navigating a labyrinth of the macabre. Within this cover, Charles and Cunniffe so thoroughly convey her driving mission so well that ifI think about it too long I’ll get emotional.

On that note, I’ll conclude by noting this book is built to hurt your heart, badly, the moment she reunites with her family, and I for one am there for the devastation.

Overall: In Her Infernal Descent #3, the qualities that make this comic so enthralling are ratcheted up, resulting in the best issue yet. This is a literary comic of the highest order, a well-constructed story rich with melancholic moments, intelligentsia in-jokes, and a layer of subtle charm. 9.0/10

Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.