Johanna's Moonstone Reviews: Kolchak, Silencers, World of Darkness: Vampire the Masquerade

Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Devil in the Details
The Silencers #1
World of Darkness: Vampire the Masquerade's Lucita

















Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Devil in the Details
Story by Stefan Petrucha
Illustrated by Trevor von Eeden
Moonstone Books, 48 color pages, $6.95
http://www.scifi.com/kolchak

I stumbled across a marathon of KOLCHAK episodes the other weekend, and 
I quite enjoyed them. Now that I've seen the show, I appreciate the 
faithfulness of this tie-in even more... yet I never would have tried 
the series without reading an earlier Moonstone comic. 

The book opens with an appropriately creepy image, that of a computer 
hacker finding himself gradually disappearing. It's a nice choice for an 
updated premise that still makes sense for a shlubby newspaperman with 
an interest in the paranormal to investigate. 

The hacker's brother is dying, wasting away in the hospital, and various 
family members are out for the inheritance. The characters are quickly 
and clearly sketched out through dialogue, and the art is sultry, 
disturbing, straightforward, or funny, whatever's needed for the scene. 

I read through this comic eagerly, dying to find out which way the story 
would twist. Among the horrific revelations, paced just right to keep 
the reader on the edge of her seat, were lighter bits. Mr. Petrucha did 
a wonderful job playing the tension up and down as needed. There are 
even philosophical digressions, as you'd expect from a reflective 
journalist who's used to being ignored. A very entertaining read. 

The Silencers #1
Story: Fred Van Lente
Art: Steve Ellis
Moonstone Books, 32 color pages, $3.50
http://www.moonstonebooks.com

The promotional material describes this title as POWERS meets THE 
SOPRANOS, and it wears its influences on its sleeve, from the story to 
the art style. There's this team of superpowered mafia enforcers, see, 
and their leader, Cardinal, wants to retire but knows the only way out 
is by dying. 

The opening scene features lots of random women in skimpy underwear for 
no explained reason, and there are plenty of big fight scenes, attacks, 
and explosions. Some individual panels are very well-staged to create 
the right atmosphere, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. 

The color (by Ellis and Dae Lim Yoo) is nicely done, but the 
storytelling is muddled, complicated by a large number of characters to 
figure out. I learned more about them in the short profiles at the back 
then I did in the story -- I recommend looking up a character as soon as 
s/he appears to figure out what they're supposed to be doing with their 
powers. The team beyond Cardinal aren't yet given any motivations or 
background. 

I was also disgruntled that, by the time I'd started figuring some of 
them out, they were apparently killed off. (I'm not concerned about 
spoiling anything for the reader because issue #2 is already out, and 
random death is the Gimmick of the Year in superhero books.) It's a 
solid start for fans of both superpowers and mafia stories, but nothing 
outstanding. 

World of Darkness: Vampire the Masquerade's Lucita
Story: Bryan Edwards & Mike Reynolds
Pencils: Chris Marrinan
Inks: Keith Williams
Moonstone Books, 48 black-and-white pages, $4.95

Moonstone and its creators like to make the point, when talking about 
the World of Darkness-licensed titles, that you don't have to play the 
game to understand the books. The question isn't whether a new reader 
understands the comic, though, but whether the reader enjoys the comic. 
For me, the answer is a resounding no. Without the game connection, I 
have no reason to wade through the adventures of a random group of 
vampires running around trying to one-up each other, especially when 
they tend to refer to background stories and feuds that aren't in the 
comic. 

The darkly grey-toned art looks like it was originally intended to be 
colored (a suspicion borne out by the note to colorist left on one of 
the art pages). The dialogue is pedestrian, with statements like "that 
bitch hurt Josh BAD", but useful -- up until that point, I hadn't 
realized that any of the bad guys had been damaged, since the artist 
relies too much on mysterious silhouettes and meaningful looks for me to 
actually know what's going on. There's a number of grim-faced, 
long-haired, well-built brunettes I couldn't tell apart, which made it 
especially difficult to figure out who was fighting whom or even how 
many characters I was trying to keep track of. 

If I was involved in the story or any of the characterization, I'd want 
to figure all this out, and I wouldn't mind rereading to do so. (Also, 
the lesbian scenes would likely seem important to the story instead of 
simple titillation.) As it is, though, I wound up flipping through the 
book, just waiting for it to be over.

-- 
Johanna Draper Carlson             
Reviews of Comics Worth Reading -- http://www.comicsworthreading.com