Comic Review: The Black Hood (The Bullet's Kiss- Chapter Three)- Asking a question that has already been answered

Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artist: Michael Gaydos
Publisher: Dark Circle Comics
Released: 22nd April 2015



Who is the Black Hood?

After reading this comic book my answer to that question would be the following:

The Black Hood is a cop in a mask who got framed for a crime that he didn’t commit, and is now running around the city in a black hood beating up drug dealers and homophobes and asking the question, ‘Tell me who’s above you?’

I was initially a little confused about the time period that the book was set in, as it reminded me of a late 1970’s/ 1980’s television cop show, with men drinking moodily at bars, old televisions and dimly lit inner city street alleyways. I enjoyed the art in this book quite a lot, but it screamed 1980’s not 2015, so when I saw a ‘cell-phone’ reference it jolted me a bit.

This book is set in the present day, so why does it feel so 1980’s? Perhaps it’s just me? Perhaps when I read any of these detective/cop/superhero books they just take me back a couple of decades when television was more of a big deal than it is today?

As far as I can gather from reading this one issue, the comic book isn’t really about social commentary, issues, larger debates, or connecting with what is happening in the US right now with the cop shooting controversies and nation-wide protests about police brutality. The book doesn’t appear to be trying to do anything at all. It’s about the story, about making it exciting, fast paced, gritty and interesting to the reader. That’s okay, you don’t have to say anything in your writing if you don’t want to, but if you are trying to write an interesting story then you need a good idea to carry it, and I can’t see one in this book.

The story appears to be that old tale about drugs, cops, corruption and all of the issues that movies such as Serpico dealt with in 1973. It’s about a cop fighting drug gangs and trying to find out who controls them. The only difference here is that the cop is a superhero, so it’s already a bit silly. Plus the question about who controls street drugs was answered quite conclusively many decades ago. The answer is that corrupt cops, and their higher level (government three letter agency) handlers are the people responsible, not the lower level drug dealers themselves.

Drugs are allowed to flood into inner cities, criminalising (mainly black) young men, and allowing the ‘authorities’ a good excuse to take them into the privately ran prison system that is so profitable to so many people. The reason for this is obvious, and two-fold. Making drugs illegal and abundant helps to control the poor, and to enrich the already wealthy.

So when the Black Hood is going around the city punching people and asking them, ‘Who’s above you? It’s a pretty redundant question. We already know, and if he really wants to know he should do a five minute Google search and it will save him a whole lot of time, and wear and tear on his fists.

The book then is to be judged not on how it connects to reality (it doesn’t) but whether or not it’s an exciting story with an interesting or likeable protagonist. The book has the Hood narrating his own story, and although that's becoming a bit cliche now, it still works as it gets you to empathise and root for the guy.

Despite this usually reliable technique I couldn't find anything in the character to hook me or capture my interest. He didn’t feel particularly contemporary, or very real to me, and I couldn’t empathise with him, not just because he’s a cop, but because he felt like a character, not a real-life flesh and blood person.

The story itself is a bit static as well. It begins with the Hood asking a question, and ends with him asking the same question. The rest of the book is pretty much him explaining what has happened to him, with a bit of social justice warrior crime fighting thrown in there as well, just to remind you that this is a comic book written in 2015.

I enjoyed the terrific Francavilla front cover of this book, and the intense, gritty, grainy interior art is just as good as well. Unfortunately though the story barely held my interest. There is a serious tone to the book that borders on the comedic, and as the Black Hood told his generic tale of corruption and betrayal all I could think about was that South Park episode with Cartman running around in a daft Coon mask.


Rating: 5/10 (Looks great, but there’s nothing new or exciting happening here)

Comic review: Mister X Razed- Xmas In Somnopolis #1- Great, well done, clever boy, have a biscuit.

Writer: Dean Motter
Artist: Dean Motter
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 25th February 2015

After the first ten pages of this book it was annoying me so much that I could barely muster up the energy to keep on reading it.

Fighting against the urge to chuck the book in the bin and read something less irritating I continued to read on and was pleasantly surprised by a clever plot twit mid-way through the book.

This twist kept me reading until the end, and I have to acknowledge that it was a very well thought out, cleverly written and expertly drawn comic book.

My problem with it is that it’s an exercise in cleverness that doesn’t really say anything.

Well, perhaps the twist might say something? Don’t jump to conclusions, perhaps? Read a story through to the end, and it might be cleverer than you think? It certainly says that, but that’s just about all I could get out of it.

If you want your comic books to engage with the world outside of your bedroom window then this isn’t going to be a book for you. There is nothing in the book that couldn’t have been written in 1985, 1995 or 2005.

The narrative is set in a dystopic future, but it’s a big generic US city future and the characters both look and act like they are in a 1940’s Humphrey Bogart movie. Is that cool? Some people might think so, but to me it just looks old, really, really old.

The plot twist surprised me, but that was just because I assumed that the book was awful, and not because I hadn’t seen the twist done before in a similar detective/crime book.

The script had the usual coincidences that help move it along, and the eponymous Mister X appeared oddly supernatural as he just popped up whenever needed, and then disappeared when his narrative role was completed. That’s a manipulative writing technique, and some people accept it because they just want a good story. I dislike it because it feels contrived and fake.

That’s it. I cannot think of anything else to say about the book other than it’s clever and that it doesn’t resonate with contemporary socio-economic-political concerns. If you want a clever book with a lovely use of the colour red in the artwork then get the book. That’s what’s on offer here: Cool, clever and red. Great, well done, clever boy, have a biscuit.

Rating: 7/10 (Well written book with lovely colouring, but there is no connection to the world that I am living in)

Nothing happened: A short story for the modern age

Writer: Mark. A. Pritchard

Released: 11th February 2015

Publisher: The Rorshach Rant



Nothing happened, and so he waited, waited, waited.

Still nothing, so he acted.

On the day that would be his last he woke early, excited with the knowledge that finally, finally, finally, something was actually going to happen.

How exciting, an event, a scene, a moment when the apathy, the boredom, the routine, the tedium would be broken.

Forever.

Shower, shave, and the rest, his breakfast was light.

He put his shoes on, walked to the bus.

The driver glanced indifferently with cold dead amphibian eyes.

Still, he smiled.

Something was happening to him today; at last. The smile came naturally, like the dawn of a new day on a blood soaked battlefield.

It’s such a joy to smile, unprompted, to hide it with shy self-conscious embarrassment. But to let it out, let it beam to the universe, that is joy, that is freedom.

The young man was liberated, so close to his end, and free at last.

He fiddled with his coat, adjusted his backpack, time was almost running out.

Passengers finally noticed him; they shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

What was this young man doing?

What was he up to?

He stood up.

No, no, no, he can’t be, he can’t be.

Surely somebody will do something?

Stop him?

They sat, watched, nobody acted but the young man.

Then

It happened.

An explosion.

Not in our town?

Surely not in our town?

A defining moment that would change the town forever.

Nothing could ever be the same again.

The young man stepped off the bus.

Carrying with him the battered remains of his iphone.

Destroyed, never to be used again.

He dropped it in a bin.

It was easier than he had thought.

His mind now free, he had acted, and done what had to be done.

He walked to the library.

Smiling.

Picked up a book.

And started to read.


Artwork in story is 'New World Order' by the brilliant theKinhe on deviant art. Check him out here:
http://www.deviantart.com/art/New-World-Order-175230007

Comic book review: Sherlock Holmes- Moriarty Lives #5- Occupy Moriarty?

Writer: David Liss
Artist: Carlos Furuzono
Cover artist: Francesco Francavilla
Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Released: 30th July 2014


This concluding issue of the re-emergence of Professor Moriarty, after his near death at the Reichenbach falls, offers one slightly confusing misdirection, before wrapping things up in a slightly disappointing, and pedestrian manner.

There's our hero, with a nice little hipster goatee

That’s not always a bad thing of course. Endings that twist and shock but make no sense are far worse than endings that fail to surprise. And anyway, the entire purpose of this book was to explore the character of Professor Moriarty, his philosophy, his morality and his methodology as well. It achieves those goals and along the way there was some fantastic dialogue coming from the mouth of the Professor himself.

Unlike a lot of real world (top-level) criminals that operate through the secret occulted family blood-lines that control modern day finance, corporations and government, Professor Moriarty appears to be a self-made villain. He might have inherited his evil in a genetic sense, but he didn’t need to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth to get where he is today. Everything he achieved in this book was without outside assistance. Surely if the man operated a global criminal empire of such power and influence he would be able to get word out, and get some help in the little town he found himself washed up and alone in?

No help came his way, and he didn’t ask for any either. Is he doing this to prove himself? Or is his criminal empire not as powerful as we might think? You’d think that the main spider in the web of criminal evil would be more powerful, wouldn’t you? You don’t see that here. What you see is a self-made man, the ultimate capitalist.

You can criticise the underlying ideological and socio-political assumptions made here. You can even call it out for naivety. Writer David Liss has bought into the idea that the world is full of self- made men, battling for control on a level playing field. I would strongly disagree, and argue that this is not the case. The world is ran by a tiny minority of rich families and populated by billions of poor families. It is a slave colony. The rich families get richer, and the poor families get poorer. And the middle families, they get sucked further down, not further up. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, but exceptions just prove the rule itself.

The villain is a big fan of Guantanamo Bay

Occupy Wallstreet talked about the 1%. That 1% is not one man. It is a group of families that own everything and everybody. If Professor Moriarty really was the spider at the centre of a global web of crime, as described by Sherlock Holmes, he would be a part of the 1%, not just another 99 percenter, as he appears to be in this book.

Our crony capitalist playing field is not level, and these days it’s hard to argue that it is. It is a field where you can battle against the bloodline elite’s, or you can join their anti-human, satanic control system. Most chose to join it, some consciously, most unconsciously. From politicians, to bankers, to corporate leaders, to drug cartel kingpins, to child traffickers, to child ‘educators,’ to television ‘programmers,’ the evil that exists in this world today is organised evil, not a self-made lone evil as represented by an individual like Professor Moriarty.

That was kind of the point in Conan Doyle’s original stories, at least as I read it. Moriarty was rarely seen, and when he did appear he was an abstract figure who only communicated with Holmes, not Doctor Watson, the writer of the stories. Did Moriarty even exist? I would argue that no, he didn’t exist at all. The ‘Moriarty’ system operates through its agents, and one of those agents battled Holmes at the Reichenbach falls, but the system is not one man.  Moriarty represented a hidden power, rather than a hidden individual. It was not about him, it was about something deeper, more occulted than that.

The slaves are starting to question their masters

It’s a mainstream idea that the world is fair, and that the strong can rise to the top. All of the research and reading that I’ve ever done indicates that this is not the case. There is scope for change at the lower levels, and you can advance your position, but the top is fixed. You can join it of course, but you will be a servant, not a master. Just another slave to the control system, no matter how big your house is, no matter how pretty your wife is, and no matter how much money you have in your bank account.

‘Moriarty’ is not a man. He is the criminal system itself. The one percent that the Occupy movement have been trying to tell the world about.

Narratively speaking, this concluding issue of Moriarty Lives wraps things up in a fairly formulaic manner. The bad guy is defeated; there is some misdirection (that confused me, so it didn’t work), and a promise that perhaps we’ll see more of the Moriarty character in future Sherlock Holmes books.

I enjoyed the dialogue more than anything else in this run. It was very good, insightful even. The underpinning societal assumptions were problematic to me however. The art was average, at best, and the narrative ends on a slight down, rather than the up you would need to get readers really enthusiastic and demanding more from the Moriarty character. It was still a good read though. I enjoyed the interpersonal dynamics between Moriarty and his young apprentice, there are some valuable life-lessons in the earlier issues as well, and the cover artwork by Francesco Francavilla has been gloriously gothic, atmospheric and consistently excellent throughout the entire five-issue run.

Rating: 7/10