Writer: Shaun Simon
Artist: Mike Allred
Publisher: Vertigo/DC
Released: 28th October 2015
Art portraits are real, the subject lives within the frame, can be stolen, protected by ‘Art-Ops.’ The Mona Lisa is a physical lady, not oil on canvas. Creative idea from Shaun Simon, but I dislike the art. Comic book about art being alive has unimpressive art, ends up defeating itself?
Rating: 5/10
I really enjoyed ‘Neverboy’ from Shaun Simon. It had a great central idea, and the art (By Tyler Jenkins) was perfect for what the book was trying to convey. It was a book about creativity, and the art was very creative, so it was the perfect marriage between narrative and art. ‘Art-Ops’ features another creative concept from writer Shaun Simon, with the idea being that art is alive within the frame, and that what is drawn can come out of the frame and interact with the physical world. The ‘Art-Ops’ (who they work for, or how they are funded, is not specified) work to protect the people living in the portraits (how does it work with things like mountains and landscape portraits?) from art thieves. Are the art thieves purely interested in money, or is something more interesting going on? I’m not sure, but I’m sure we’ll find out later as I am unsure about any of the motivations here. The main protagonists are a punk haired boy (makes a change from a punk haired girl I guess, but what is it with the punk haircuts in comic books?) and his Mum. His Mum worked for the art-ops, but goes missing, and it’s up to him to take her place, but he’s reluctant, as is to be expected. He has no Dad by the way, which is a theme that I’m really starting to notice now in all forms of mainstream cultural programming. If you’ve read anything on my blog you’ll know what I think about that, and how the state wants fathers out of the lives of children, leaving children easy pray for the father substitute that is the state. I hope that the father turns up in this book, and I hope that he’s a good guy, as that will make a nice change from the norm and will be sending out a strong message about the importance of fathers, but we’ll see. The main problem I had with this book however was that I disliked Mike Allred’s art. I found it to be borderline bad, lacking in detail, lacking in intensity, lacking in emotion, blocky, static, amateurish, basic, and just not very good at all. What more can I say? I didn't like it, at all. That’s a huge disappointment to me because I really enjoyed the art in Neverboy, and the art here (for me) is nowhere near as good. I wanted to be impressed by this book, but the art just isn’t doing it for me, and I don’t know if there’s enough here plot/character/idea wise for me to hang around for too long. Because of the good-will I still retain from my enjoyment of Neverboy I’ll give it one more issue before making up my mind about it, but sad as it is for me to type out these words, I’m feeling very much underwhelmed by this book at the moment.
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