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Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma: Panchantra #1 (Samit Basu/Ashish Badelekar; Virgin)
76 (B. Clay Moore/Ed Tadem for "Jackie Karma"; Seth Peck/Tigh Walker for "Cool"; Image)
Afterburn 1 of 4 (Scott Chitwood, Paul Ens/Wayne Nichols; Red 5): The concept is that a massive solar flare blasts half the planet, to wit: "Scandinavia, Europe, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Asia". (Scandinavia apparently not being part of Europe, and Russia and the Middle East being neither European nor Asian, apparently.) The Americas kinda sorta being the only surviving part, they quickly realize that the rest of the world is open to plunder, which is also kind of necessary, what with needing to reinvent industrial economies without much oil. We follow the main character Jake on a couple of the plunder runs, done for private clients; on the first, his team takes the Mona Lisa from the Louvre (because plundering the Louvre, once people realized that there was plunder to be had, wouldn't have been one of the first things done. Right.) On the second, they're doing something at the behest of "the Chinese embassy" -- apparently the embassies abroad cobbled together a government, though what it is that they're governing is entirely unclear, since China itself is a land of floods and mutants. Peculiar geography aside, this is the sort of story that feels very much as though it should have been a movie in the first place -- not because it would have been better visually (I suspect it would have been nearly impossible to make, given the extensive CGI needed to represent the flooded planet), but because you can make this sort of film move fast enough that people don't have time to think about it. It's also the sort of story that's probably going to grab people better if if it's more dynamic and kinetic. As it stands, we've got the situation, but we don't really have characters. Everyone is basically an action-adventure cipher right now. It might improve, but given how busy the story is already, I can't see where it's going to get the time.
Devi 16-17 (Mohapatra/Chandrasekhar; Virgin):
Virgin has, it seems, signed up for this year's Free Comic Book Day. Due to the brouhaha with The Salon and apparently one or two other titles, the people in charge of FCBD have declared that all titles offered should be all-ages appropriate. Virgin has been, shall we say, notably lacking in all-ages titles until this year. "Tall Tales" would appear to be one of their two attempts -- Dan Dare being the other -- to do an actual all-ages title, and this is an attempt at an all-ages story doing what Virgin does, retelling and updating traditional Indian stories. That said ... I wouldn't recommend this for anyone under the age of 12 or so.
We start out inside the book of the Panchantra. Chapter 1, verse 18, apparently. An old man is arguing with two beautiful women, because he doesn't want to do what he's supposed to do. Eventually, they talk him into it, and he transforms into a tortoise while the women transform into swans. A magician leading a horde of orcs, or something like, comes over the hill, slaughter the geese and the tortoise, and eat them and drink their blood. This disrupts the narrative of the story, which is vitally important to the flow of things in the world.
Jump to modern day Mumbai. Vishnu, a teenager, is grousing to a friend over the phone because his grandfather died and all he got was a book, the Panchantra, a kid's book of tales. He opens the door to his home to discover a talking lion, ox, and monkey, trying to convince him to take up his grandfather's mantle as world-guardian. After a very bad start, they kind of convince him that they're real, that the stories are real (for certain values of "real"), and that they need to go to his grandfather's house to find the world-guardian's weapons. The orcs have followed. Mayhem in midtown Mumbai ensues, including orcs getting shot point-blank in the eyes and having throats slashed.
The artwork works for the sort of modern day fable that the story is aiming for, and the story itself is a fascinating blend of the traditional story and a modern tale, and gruesome fun. It's just not really an all-ages story. Recommended; just not for children.
Oddly enough, Tall Tales appears to be on a seriously compressed publication schedule. Either that, or Virgin's given Amazon a seriously mistaken publication date for the trade, which is also entirely possible.
76 (B. Clay Moore/Ed Tadem for "Jackie Karma"; Seth Peck/Tigh Walker for "Cool"; Image)
I don't know ... I just don't know.
"Jackie Karma": a man comes to New York to find Bobby Horner, a drugged out, burned out drunk living in an alley. Bobby doesn't remember the man, although they've met, but the man tells him that he's about to start something, and he doesn't want any interference from "you kung fu motherfuckers." Howler gets a message to John Carmichael, attorney at law, about what's happened. Somewhere in there, some guy gets his head cut off. Not knowing about that, John tells his wife that he's got to settle up some business from the old days. He hauls out the old leather jacket, puts on the lion's head belt and the extreme bell bottoms, and then goes out on to the street, causing everyone in a five-mile radius to curse and pray because Jackie Karma's back in town!
"Cool": a much more involved story so far. Pete and Leon work for Smitty the bail bondsman, and they're out pursuing Sheldon Abramowitz, wanted for mail fraud. (Sheldon happens to be the size of a small house. Smitty neglected to tell them that.) After a bit more trouble than they were expecting, Sheldon is subdued. Meanwhile, elsewhere in LA, Mark Reed brings his girlfriend cum stripper, Cherry Baum, along with him to make a drop, unwise though that is. Turns out that the person he was making the exchange with had instructions to kill Mark, which he does. Cherry, not wanting to become deceased herself, hits the murderer with the car and drives away. Meanwhile, back at the bail bondsman's office, Pete and Leon get their next assignment ... to find Cherry Baum. Meanwhile, back at the murderer's employer -- said employer happening to be a porn mogul, former porn star, and little person -- Logan is confessing that he killed Mark but didn't know about the person in the car until too late.
The idea behind "76" is that it's telling the same sorts of exploitation/action stories that you saw in movies in 1976. And, on the one hand, the authors and illustrators successfully evoke those sorts of stories -- including, unfortunately, the utter lack of sense to some parts. (Seriously, once you discover that the people you were worried about are either druggies or out of the vigilante business, why would you bother them? Why would you deliberately get their attention?) Thing is, these stories strike me as the type of thing that you're probably going to really like if you were actually around in 1976 and old enough to see and understand them, or else it completely sails over your head if you weren't. The black and white artwork is clean, distinctive, easy to distinguish characters and more or less works for the story. I just can't quite figure out who the audience is. As far as I can tell, it's meant to be an ongoing, rather than a mini, so I hope they can figure that out.
Afterburn 1 of 4 (Scott Chitwood, Paul Ens/Wayne Nichols; Red 5): The concept is that a massive solar flare blasts half the planet, to wit: "Scandinavia, Europe, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Asia". (Scandinavia apparently not being part of Europe, and Russia and the Middle East being neither European nor Asian, apparently.) The Americas kinda sorta being the only surviving part, they quickly realize that the rest of the world is open to plunder, which is also kind of necessary, what with needing to reinvent industrial economies without much oil. We follow the main character Jake on a couple of the plunder runs, done for private clients; on the first, his team takes the Mona Lisa from the Louvre (because plundering the Louvre, once people realized that there was plunder to be had, wouldn't have been one of the first things done. Right.) On the second, they're doing something at the behest of "the Chinese embassy" -- apparently the embassies abroad cobbled together a government, though what it is that they're governing is entirely unclear, since China itself is a land of floods and mutants. Peculiar geography aside, this is the sort of story that feels very much as though it should have been a movie in the first place -- not because it would have been better visually (I suspect it would have been nearly impossible to make, given the extensive CGI needed to represent the flooded planet), but because you can make this sort of film move fast enough that people don't have time to think about it. It's also the sort of story that's probably going to grab people better if if it's more dynamic and kinetic. As it stands, we've got the situation, but we don't really have characters. Everyone is basically an action-adventure cipher right now. It might improve, but given how busy the story is already, I can't see where it's going to get the time.
Devi 16-17 (Mohapatra/Chandrasekhar; Virgin):
In which the second real story arc finally gets underway. Oddly, we get an (impressively brief but informative) recap from one of the villains, as though they expected a long publication gap that didn't happen. In any event, having told us what just happened, said villain and his gang are killed by person or persons unknown. Rahul, having recovered from his recent possession by a celestial enforcer, investigates, and finds signs that lead him to believe that Tara/Devi might have committed these murders. (Strangely, stray police have noproblems with finding darinde, supernatural creatures in the shape of men except for being very green, murdered on site. Anyway, Rahul questions Tara, who knows nothing about the murders. (Incidentally, Tara seems to have gotten back to living her non-goddess life. Not so incidentally, the writers appear to have clean forgot just exactly what that was, or how difficult it should be to just fit back in after being away for more than a month.) Tara also discovers that she may have a sister, who winds up staying with her while Tara tries to validate that claim. In the meantime, more murders make the local political situation go completely pear shaped, and Rahul's investigation to try to clear Tara winds up implicating her.
I have to admit, I wish I knew more about the source Devi legend. In Bombaby, the graphic novel version of the Devi tale done by Antony Mazzotta, her sister also winds up playing an important role, as a sort of tiger-avatar of the goddess. Anyway, this second arc looks like it's going to be less "world ending soon, pay attention" and more focused on how being Devi affects Tara's life, which looks to make an interesting change.
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From:
devi
just a note... tara was iyam's mistress in #2 so she really did not have a "life" to go back to after #10.
the stuff from before the timeline of issue #2 will be dealt with in later arcs (we did touch upon that in #11) :)
also if you pay attention to Rahul and doc's banter in #17, the cops are really in denial about the darinde :D
btw, thanks for reading my stuff.. if you liked Sadhu 1-8 do check out Sadhu Silent Ones.
--Saurav Mohapatra
email: mohaps AT gmail DOT com
web: www.mohaps.com