The Genre-Faithful Adventures of the Superfisters

If you'd told us last week that we were going to really really dig the new Lone Ranger comic book from Dynamite, we'd have been like, "aw, fiddlesticks." We might've thought that the only way to do a good Lone Ranger would be tongue-in-cheek; giant swaggering guns, aw-shucks hickishness, maybe a Bruce Campbell smirk. Brett Matthews, Sergio Carriello, Dean White, John Cassaday, and Simon Bowland have hit upon great dialog, snazzy characters, and an earnest affection for the Western genre -- without camping it up.

Shirley you must know the premise: a heroic masked man gallops about the West, righting seemingly-insurmountable wrongs with the aid of a whip-smart ally Tonto and his horse Silver. In issue one of this mostly-faithful re-imagining, a family of Texas Rangers faces down some sinister horse thieves (or are they something worse?), accompanied by flashbacks to the childhood of John, the youngest son. John grows up a clever kid, learning lessons about the value of life -- even criminals' -- and never forgetting his family's roots.

What might be the very best part of the book, though, is its dialog: there's not much of it. No sentence is more than eight or so words long, which gives you plenty of time to enjoy the scenery and the action and the honest-to-God love of the genre. The first printing of issue one sold out completely, and for the first time in its history, Dynamite had to order a second printing. We can't wait for the next batch of stories.

Joe Infurnari's Mandala is really really pretty, but WTF is going on in it? You read the book backwards-to-front, first the right-hand pages and then the left-hand pages. There's a sort of parallel narrative going on, about the two ends of a human lifecycle; the right-hand pages are about a kid beginning adulthood, and the left-hand ones are about an old guy nearing eternity. And each set of pages has a sort of thematic match. So reading the book is sort of like climbing a ladder over and over, reading the right side of the rungs as you climb down and the left as you climb up.

So, what does it all add up to? Some attractive art, and a vague statement about the continual machinery of life. This is not a particularly fresh observation, but oh well. The drawings sure are nice.

And then there's Impaler, as in Vlad. In a modern-day metropolis, a mystical ghost from the Dark Ages creeps around and eats souls, or whatever, while a hard-boiled, down-on-his-luck cop archetype is humanity's last hope, or whatever. We're following the monster-story template fairly closely on this one.

The book is awfully dialog-heavy for a story about impalings. But fortunately, none of the dialog is all that critical. A glance at one or two percent of the speech bubbles, and you'll be able to fill in the blanks from what we assume is a vast knowledge of how scary stories usually go: oh, look, the coroners are investigating a supernaturally killed corpse, I wonder if something spooky is about to happen.

So, what separates Impaler, which bores us with loyal adherence to monster-movie rules, and The Lone Ranger, whose affection for the western genre gives us pleasurable vibrations? We're not really sure, but we'd guess it depends on the strength with which each book grasps on to prior works. Impaler's plot points are so familiar that the deja vu freaks us out; TLR doesn't replay events from other stories, it just tweaks our memory with familiar dusty panoramas and awesome mustaches. Impaler's story is scary-movie-specific, while TLR could be a western or a comedy or sci-fi or a love story. So basically: one's kinda creative, and the other's really creative.

Speaking of genres, let's say a few words about the terrifyingly confusing Crater on the Moon. The art is a sort of clip-and-paste style; it looks like someone took a whole bunch of photographs, snipped out various pieces, and then glued them al together in an arrangement that hints at making sense without actually doing so. Same goes for the dialog and plot: it's a WTF collage.

Here's a typical exchange: "Requesting clearance to land and consultation with the oracle. I ... uhh ... accept your radio silence as confirmation." "Roger! Mike India-7 X-ray tango ... making our approach now!" "Major Brown! Give Commander Crater full cooperation ... but keep him away from M.I.B ... after that Lemnos Affair ... and that debacle in the Dolomites ... I swear ... he screws up one more ... get me Secretary Delmar!" "Spirit of Fritz Rex..." "Daddy! It's Space Marshall Creon! Ask him if..." "Hmm? Ah, Alcestis honey, stop answering my telephone! Rex Creon! You sumbitch! When your XT boys goin' to the moon?"

Oooooooookay. It just goes on like that. For pages. The curtain falls on Volume One at 139 pages, with an real conclusion nowhere in sight. It's enough gibberish to make you actually literally go crazy.

Here's the thing, though: it might all make perfect sense if you're an encyclopedia of classic myths and sci-fi. Nearly every line of dialog from a mention of Rigelian Trogs to "Space Marshall Creon" is a sly nod to some other text. And after just a few panels, all that nodding is enough to make you completely dizzy.