The Homeland Directive. Robert Venditti (Writer), Mike Huddleston(Art), Sean Konot (Letters) Top Shelf Productions (2011)

Very gripping and enjoyable paranoid thriller that solves a serious plot problem really well. Dr Laura Regan is a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and finds herself kidnapped after a speech in New York. She is the target of a lethal operation being organised by the Department of Homeland Security, thought neither she nor her kidnappers know why. Laura's has been snatched by three government employes of thee different agencies who suspect that there is a serious conspiracy afoot and that Laura is both a target and a key. They are proved to be correct and the conspiracy is cleverly constructed, the reveals are very well staged, the action is pointed and sharp with a well thought out context.
The Homeland Directive follows a fairly well trodden path of paranoid, political thrillers with a conspiracy being hatched in a dark corner of government to achieve a expedient objective. What matters is the way that the action is staged and how it is resolved and Robert Venditti delivers a smart story that sets up problems as cleverly as it resolves them. The most important problem is how do a number of fugitives hide from the coordinated efforts of the law enforcement and security services of the USA? How can a story make the David versus Goliath aspect work without making Goliath a bumbling idiot and thus drain the tension from the story? Robert Venditti has a very clever answer, three of the fugitives used to work for Goliath and know how to hide and how to assess the stages of the hunt, this gives credibility to the way they stay free long enough to penetrate the conspiracy. In addition the mechanics of the plan are unexpected and also allow for a equally unexpected route to fight it.
In addition to very well thought out plot mechanics the cast are varied, fallible, responding to stress and the knowledge that they are ultimately only delaying the inevitable confrontation rather than escaping it with believable and individual reactions. The only slightly off note is provided by a pursuer who is marginally more of a plot necessity than a character, this is not surprising as he has a vital if narrow function. Otherwise the cast overall are everything they should be.
Mike Huddleston's very distinctive art is a great asset in keeping the book off the beaten track of political thrillers. The art styles varies considerably throughout the story depending on the cast, location and plot requirements. The apparently random use of colours breaks up the story without ever interrupting it. The art is frequently spare and scratch for the cast with different page backgrounds helping change context and tone. Rober Venditti and Mike Huddleston take the classic and necessary ingredients of a political thriller and shake them up into a great story that follows the rules of the genre while making it fresh and unexpected.

I.R.$. Volume 3: Silicia, Inc. Stephen Desberg (Writer), Bernard Vrancken (Artist), Luke Spear (Translation), Imadjinn (Letters). Cinebook (Ltd. (2009)

An enjoyable and engaging crime story. Larry B. Max is an investigator for the IRS who finds a link in a public corruption  case he is pursuing with the death of a ex-president of an unnamed Asian country in France. The link starts with an ex-US Army officer and leads to a bank in Aruba, it also leads a very competent assassin to track Larry in parallel. The reveals are cleverly staged, the lines of the plot are drawn together well and the set up for the second half of the story well established.
Larry B. Max and the assassin are well matched, both excellent at their jobs and both very committed to doing them. The slightly unusual angle taken by Stephen Desberg to use the IRS as the agency and be following money trails pays off. It gives a nice sense of the pervasive nature of money laundering and gives Larry Max's action hero moments a nice, slightly unexpected twist. Larry is given a interesting personal life, which proves to be a useful route for an enemy to attack him. The assassin is mostly a cipher, simply ruthless and very competent, she is properly shadowy as she needs to be. 
One of the nice aspects to the story is the way the extra details are werapped around a very simple story and give it a greater depth and context. The US Senate hearings into ex-President Neruda Sumadayo's relations with the US and how that may have spilled out further into an Iran-Contra situation is nicely proposed.
Bernard Vracken's art is clean and forceful,  the panel lays out are varied and allow the different parts of the story to cross over each other without any confusion. The cast are given room to act and do so with vigor, the body language is expresive, the action is explosive or quiet exactly as required.
This is a low key story that works with quiet details that steadily move the story forward, packing more of a punch than it looks.

B.P.R.D. The Devil's Engine & The Long Death. Mike Mignola, John Arcudi (Writers), Tyler Crook, James Harren (Art), Dave Stewart (Colours), Clem Robins (Letters). Dark Horse Books (2012)

This book has two long stories, The Devil's Engine which is enjoyable and The Long Death which is excellent. In the Devil's Engine a B.P.R.D Agent, Andrew Devon and a physic crust punk, Fenix are taking a train back to Denver. Fenix had shot Abe Sapien in a previous episode and was turning her self into the B.P.R.D., Agent Devon had witnessed the shooting and done nothing to prevent it and this event forms an uneasy knot between them. Fenix has a premonition about danger on the train which turns out be to accurate and herself and Devon face a long journey back to Denver when they encounter some very large and very, very hungry monsters. The action is well staged and the interaction between the cast in nicely judged. The climax is smart and effective. In the Long Death Johann Kraus leads a team to investigate an incident in the Northwest woods. Johann has an agenda he does not share with the rest of the team which leads to significant trouble and then to a superbly staged double confrontation and conclusion.
What marks the difference between the two stories is the strong sense that the second story matters, it has deep roots in the continuity of the B.P.R.D series, it tackles a trailing plot line in a powerful and effective fashion. Even as doors are closed more are opened, the cast behave in unheroic but very characteristic  ways, make terrible mistakes and struggle credibly to deal with the extraordinary events that surround them. On the other hand in the Devil's Train the neither Fenix nor Devon have the same depth of time in the continuity, they take a starring role very late in the series without their being sufficient evidence anywhere why the reader should care. It is highly unlikely that any reader is coming to this volume cold, the extensive cast have been around for quite a while and the rather abrupt positioning of two relative unknowns center stage is odd. The second thread in the story is a door opening exercise typical of the series, it looses some impact because it is not surrounded by a story that could lend it more significance or tension.
The art by Tyler Crook on The Devil's Engine is superb, Devon and Fenix are given the chance to move through a lot of different situations and emotions and be believable in them all. The deeply nasty monsters are creepy and and never look as thought they have been forced into the surroundings. The action is vivid as are the reactions.
James Harren's art on The Long Death is outstanding moving from a gripping opening to two extended fight scenes which are messy, brutal beat downs , which considering who is involved is exactly what they should be. The snowy Northwest woods forms a great back drop, it never overshadows the cast it just puts them in perspective as the monsters circle about them. With a larger cast there is a opportunity for small slivers of interplay that are one of the joys of the series as minor characters get to make a mark.
Dave Stewart colours both stories with his usual level of astounding craft and subtle brilliance, in particular the second , mostly silent fight in the Long Death, the colours make the action flow  and give the details the order they should have. Clem Robins uses letters with understated care and energy to give the cast deeper tone and provides sound effects that anchor the moment.
The Devil's Engine is a good story, The Long Death makes this a comic worth getting.

Athos in America. Jason (Writer & Art), Hubert (Colours), Kim Thompson (Tanslation). Fantagraphics Books (2011)

A mixed collection of stories , crime, science fiction, horror and apparent autobiography and drama, some of which work more effectively than others.
The art and layout of the stories is very distinctive, a four panel grid is used for every page and all of the cast are animal  or bird headed humaniods. The effect of the page layouts is to give equal significance to each panel, the normal ways that panels are used to suggest the passage of time or to give a additional dramatic context to the story are missing here, the content of the panel has to carry all the weight of the story and intent. Due to this the more successful stories have very strong plots that give the content the force needed to make the most of the restrictions Jason imposes on himself.
A Cat from Heaven, a story that features the messy  breakdown of a relationship and its aftermath of a comics creator called Jason who is identified in the story as the creator of several of Jason's own books is not served well by the storytelling process. It is too slow and even, it does not give greater emphasis where it is need to give the story a lift or give the conclusion some weight. The flatness imposed is not lifted enough by the content. The same applies to the title story, Athos in America where Athos, from the Three Musketeers has a conversation in a bar. The action has happened off screen and is being reported in the conversation, the layout does not give the room needed to involve the reader very much.
The other stories all have the virtue of clever, frequently very nasty plots, to drive the action and use the layout to lift the story.
The Smiling Horse is a very pared down story of the results of a kidnapping and it uses the enforced pace of the panels to superb effect, the inevitable gains weight and force as it creeps up to the conclusion.  On the other hand The Brain that Wouldn't Virginia Woolf , a horror love story mixes mad science and love with care and melancholy. The structure of the story is superb, nicely teasing the readers expectations.
Tom Waits on the Moon  does not quite work, the idea is clever and the structure is excellent, it just does not quite give the cast enough of a connection to make the finale come off as it should.
So Long, Mary Ann is a gem, hard edged and flinty it works on every level. A criminal escapes from prison and is going to seek out an old confederate to get his share of the loot. The story features a theatrically violent gangster and has a true noir spirit of damaged romance. The heightened content works because of the restraint of the art and layout , it packs a considerable punch.
A striking and enjoyable collection of stories.

Blacklung. Chris Wright (Writer & Artist). Fantagraphics Books (2012).

Interesting and ultimately unsuccessful pirate story. A teacher and a violent gangster find themselves kidnapped and taken on board a pirate ship where the gangster joins the crew and the teacher becomes a scribe for the captain. The captain is trying to commit as much evil as possible so that he is sure of joining his wife in hell while his crew, including a homicidal maniac, are along for the blood, cruelty and treasure. The story unfurls steadily and finally ends, some of the cast survive, some do not.
The structure of the story up to the point everyone is on board the ship is interesting and unexpected. The story of the gangster is told through the actions of others as friends and enemies talk about him and plot against him. It is an interesting way to introduce him, before he is a significant presence before he actually appears and so when he does he already has menace and weight. Unfortunately he is then quickly moved to a context where he is not the most dangerous person in the place, which is what he was being set up as, he cannot capitalise on the set up he was given.
The teacher on the other hand is the central character of his introduction, emotionally constipated and severely dutiful about his pupils, caring for them only as far as teaching them within the confines of the school and timetable are concerned he is deeply unsympathetic.
It would be possible to anticipate a story that followed a development of the characters of the teacher and the gangster as they are faced with the deliberate brutality and cruelty of the pirate ship, something that revealed more of who they are. Instead the story effectively comes to a halt on the ship and the balance of the book is a slow set of non-sequiters as the captain, the first mate, the homicidal maniac and others talk, maim, kill and die. The two main action set pieces are well staged but appear to be straining to mean more than just being action. It is not at all clear what the extra dimension might be as Chris Wright does not actually commit himself that far beyond the captain's mission to secure a route to hell. The story ends rather than concludes in any way.
The strikingly individual black and white art adds and subtracts from the book. Chris Wright has a very strong style, it is not at all naturalistic, the cast look a lot like hand made puppets rather than humans and while this makes the horrific violence easier to read it also distances the reader from the story. It is hard to engage with the cast, the physical cues that would normally come from body language and facial expressions are blurred by the artistic choices. At particularly at a critical point in the story where the captain is telling of what has lead to his choices the page design becomes difficult to read, if I had sufficient interest in the cast or story this would not have been a problem. As it was I was no longer willing to put in the effort to decode the pages and simply moved over them.
This is a comic that a reader will completely get or will not, I can recognise the talent in the writing and the art without every being engaged by it.

Borderline Volume 3. Carlos Trillo (Writer), Eduardo Risso (Art), Maria Barrucci (Translation), Zach Matheny (Letters) Dynamite Entertainment (2009)

Pitch black dystopian science fiction, stripped down to the barest essentials for the story and illuminated by astonishing art. In the shattered ruins of a future Earth two groups fight for dominance, the Commune and the Council both struggling to capture the market for their competing mix of drugs and salvation. Ex-lovers, Emil and Lisa are employed on each side of the struggle.  Emil racked by guilt at having sols Lisa to organ harvesters to pay for drugs works for the Commune while Lisa, now known as Crash works for the council, to pay for restored organs. Her hearing and speech were not restored and remain scrambled, she can communicate freely only with a doll, Lara.
The longest story in the book concerns the search for a woman, a mutant who can sense future events. Such mutants are vital to the plans of Marshal Saki who rules both the Commune and the Council from his base on the moon. He uses the pre-cogs to know what his enemies are planning on and to stop them first, with the last one in his power dying the search for a replacement is urgent. The search pulls in both Emil and Lisa as the woman is hunted by combined forces of both the Commune and the Council. The best story in the book is a short episode where Lisa's doll is stolen by a virtual walking skeleton for an astonishing reason and in a clever and bleakly humorous episode Lisa's deafness is used as a weapon against a significant threat to the existing structure.
The stories are as bare bones as possible, sometimes there is extra information provided to make sense of the actions, Emil explains about his relationship with Lisa because the it will become important a little later. Otherwise there is the minimal amount of information provided, just enough to set the scene and give enough depth to the context so the cast are not actually moving through a vacuum. The cast of grotesques that race, rage and kill and sometimes rest are get all the attention, they are given a surprising degree of depth while all operating with very narrow emotional ranges. Carlos Trillo has managed to give them more than enough humanity to really pull in the reader and give the ferocious melodrama a considerable punch.
Eduardo Risso's luminous black and while art is breathtaking. It is genuinely black and white, there is no shading in the art, the definition and detail is provided only by direct contrast. This extreme approach is perfectly suited to the extremity of the story and the context, this is the end of the world, down in the ruins there is no room left for anything except the most explicit actions and motives. The cast are a range of astonishing grotesques, some human males and absurdly beautiful women who are more frequently undressed than not.  Eduardo Risso avoids the kind of sleazy coyness epidemic in comics by simply having half naked women because he wants to. This straightforward approach means that the female cast are not undermined as characters by having breasts, they are very much part of the character rather than being the character.
Using melodrama to shelter subtle points and unexpected character depth this is a great comic.

Kull: The Hate Witch. David Lapham (Writer, Gabriel Guzman (Art), Marino Taibo (Inks), Dan Jackson (Colours), Richard Starkings (Letters). Dark Horse Books (2011) (

Enjoyable sword and sorcery story. Kull is visited in Valusia by an old enemy from Atlantis, the Hate Witch. She is the last survivor of an ancient race that ruled in Atlantis and she sees Kull as the key to her revenge on humanity. Kull is forced to chase her back to to Atlantis, where he is a hated enemy and exile, and where the Hate Witch can fulfill her plans. The reveals are smart and the action is fast and sharp.
Sword & sorcery is by its nature a straightforward genre, dealing in big ideas and loud action, it is possible to be too straightforward and this book is an example of that. Kull is a barbarian king of an old empire, ruling a restive population that do not fully accept him and surrounded by the constant possibility of revolt. Diplomacy is not his strong suit and the administrative aspect of ruling bores him. The opening of the book takes advantage of this as the Hate Witch starts to murder people to draw Kull into her plans. The existing fractures in Valusia are put under great pressure forcing Kull to return to Atlantis and deal with the threat.
Once on Atlantis the story looses its nice complexity and become a very straightforward hunt and kill, the return of an exile stirring up memories and more. Unlike the situation in Vaslusia where there is a nicely complex web of loyalties and jealousies simmering all the time, the action in Atlantis is just too simple.
The fact that Kull is exiled from Atlantis does not have enough present significance for the situation in Valusia for it to really matter much, so a story where it is central feels like a detour from the main action. While it does give some background and the Hate Witch is a first rate foe it is just too far from the central premise of the whole Kull saga to have much weight.The art by Gabriel Guzman and Mariano Taibo is lovely throughout the book, action or court dispute are given care and detail that make them a pleasure to read. For a story where physical presence and action is vital the cast move with in the context with force and energy. The facial expressions and the body language are clear and engaging, the cast are individual and feel like they are really on the adventure. The colours by Dan Jackson are superb, they draw out the details of the art without ever drowning it. Richard Starkings provides great sound effects and letters that give the words nuance and tone.
A minor well told Kull story is still a pleasure.