SPACEMAN #1 REVIEW

Comic List.com

Writer: Brian Azzarello

Artist: Eduardo Risso


Warning: This review contains spoilers

I've been looking for something different and interesting at my comic book store. Over the past month, I've been on a New 52 kick and have enjoyed some great stories from Marvel. However, I was not able to find something new, but that changed last week when I picked up Spaceman.

Spaceman, a nine issue science-fiction story from the creative team of 100 Bullets. The one dollar price was very nice, but I was sold on the collaboration of Azzarello and Risso. For some reason, I had not read anything online about the release of Spaceman, so I decided to give the first issue a shot. Azzarello and Risso had an amazing run with 100 Bullets and Azzarello has been on fire with Wonder Woman.


Reading Spaceman was the equivalent of reading something from Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow), Samuel Delany (Dhalgren), or Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange). That's not a negative statement, folks. The vernacular of this book is a blend of internet slang with urban American slang, which is nothing terribly difficult to decipher. I give credit to Azzarello for creating a language that works well for this wonderfully odd story.

Spaceman is Orson, a genetic freak of a creature that was created for missions to Mars. The first issue includes flashbacks to Orson on a Mars mission but most of the story deals with his life on Earth, which appears to be a cyberpunk dystopia where the water levels have flooded a major city. Orson is a scavenger and has decided to take a risky trip into waters controlled by an individual known as Rat. While on his mission, Orson encounters a ship that has exploded and is about to sink. Orson is able to help a girl named Tara off the ship. Tara is part of a reality based show developed by two powerful celebrities named Marc and April who choose a orphan to join their "multinational adopted clan". Orson not only helps Tara off the boat but encounters some "trouble".

The price for this comic book was incredible and the story itself is excellent. Azzarello has done it again and Risso has not lost his touch. There is a splash page of the city where Orson lives and it is fantastic. After reading the first issue, I am hooked and can not wait to read the rest of this series.   



TonyDoug Wright is the owner and editor of Champion City Comics. He is the writer for RED DEVIL.

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #20 REVIEW

Writer: Scott Snyder

Art: Jordi Bernet

American Vampire is badass. It’s common knowledge to most comic folks, even to those that hand out Eisners.  American Vampire won for Best New Series you know, and deservedly so: Scott Snyder’s take on vamps takes the bloodsuckers back to their original, animalistic roots in a DC Vertigo series that’s both horrific and superheroic at the same time. If you haven’t, play catch up like I did with the two trades that cover the first two volumes, they won’t waste your time. A third is purportedly on the way.

Here with Issue # 20, Snyder keeps his story going and I’ll fess up: I haven’t been into the last few months of the series, at least the monthlies, so I have to piece together the story. The regular ongoing features vampire cuss Skinner Sweet and the lovely protagonist Pearl Jones, who last I saw were in cahoots against a deadly European cadre of vamps in a young Las Vegas.

This issue marks the second in an arc entitled “The Beast in the Cave,” a departure from Pearl’s story and it’s about— well, the title kinda spills the beans, don’t it? A young Native American girl jumps at the chance to leave her dreary life as a wife-slave and go all Sacajawea-like through the western frontier with a couple of mysterious hunters. That’s all I can say and still keep this spoiler free but know that Skinner’s pre-vamped self does make a cameo, although it has no real after effect on the rest of the story.

The quality from page one all the way to the end from Snyder is no surprise. Where I have to dock the book some points is in the art department: maybe I’m too used to series artist Rafael Albuquerque’s work, but sit-in artist Jordi Bernet’s pencils look too odd to go with the normal vibe of this comic. It just seems out of place, like they belong on some other type book. I dunno, not for me I guess.

Still, it’s a book (and a title) worthy of a pickup next time you’re at your local shop.

Verdict: 5 stars for the writing, 3 stars for the art


Brian Cee Williams is a contributing writer at Champion City Comics