Never miss a post! 
Review: Elephantmen #1
Elephantmen #1
Written by Richard Starkings
Art by Moritat
Published by Image Comics. $2.99 USD
The knock on the Hip Flask books, of which this is a spinoff, is that they're beautiful but the wait is too long between books, especially for such a thin story. Which brings me to Elephantmen, which is supposed to come out more or less monthly, but isn't as beautiful and even with two stories per issue is pretty thin.
It's a flipbook, so which story is first is irrelevant. "Just Another Guy Named Joe" is a four page inner monologue from an angry Travis Bickle type, who can't get over the fact that the city is now populated by Elephantmen and other genetically engineered animal/human hybrids just trying to get along in the world. The neon and rain-drenched city is a good design from Moritat; it looks very cool and Starkings does a fine job showing how these creatures have infiltrated society at many levels in just a handful of panels. The hazy closeup of Joe looking over his shoulder at the world passing him by is very good. But when it comes down to it, it's more of a sketch than a story. A pretty good sketch, but it doesn't really go anywhere, it just gives the reader a feel for how some of the citizens may feel about these creatures.
The feeling is echoed in the other, longer story, "See the Elephant," which finds our trenchcoated elephantman Ebony befriending a little girl before her horrified mother takes her away, though the girl does leave Ebony with a gift that touches his heart. It's not bad but something that's been done many times before: I'm sure I could find a few examples of it in Chris Claremont's X-Men, with Nightcrawler in the Ebony role. Moritat goes for bolder lines here, with less detail, letting the computer coloring carry maybe a little more weight than it should. In other words, I became too aware of all the light and texture effects and they distracted from the story. I think the book has potential, but the stories need to be a bit more meaty and surprising if I'm going to keep up with it.
Written by Richard Starkings
Art by Moritat
Published by Image Comics. $2.99 USD
The knock on the Hip Flask books, of which this is a spinoff, is that they're beautiful but the wait is too long between books, especially for such a thin story. Which brings me to Elephantmen, which is supposed to come out more or less monthly, but isn't as beautiful and even with two stories per issue is pretty thin.
It's a flipbook, so which story is first is irrelevant. "Just Another Guy Named Joe" is a four page inner monologue from an angry Travis Bickle type, who can't get over the fact that the city is now populated by Elephantmen and other genetically engineered animal/human hybrids just trying to get along in the world. The neon and rain-drenched city is a good design from Moritat; it looks very cool and Starkings does a fine job showing how these creatures have infiltrated society at many levels in just a handful of panels. The hazy closeup of Joe looking over his shoulder at the world passing him by is very good. But when it comes down to it, it's more of a sketch than a story. A pretty good sketch, but it doesn't really go anywhere, it just gives the reader a feel for how some of the citizens may feel about these creatures.
The feeling is echoed in the other, longer story, "See the Elephant," which finds our trenchcoated elephantman Ebony befriending a little girl before her horrified mother takes her away, though the girl does leave Ebony with a gift that touches his heart. It's not bad but something that's been done many times before: I'm sure I could find a few examples of it in Chris Claremont's X-Men, with Nightcrawler in the Ebony role. Moritat goes for bolder lines here, with less detail, letting the computer coloring carry maybe a little more weight than it should. In other words, I became too aware of all the light and texture effects and they distracted from the story. I think the book has potential, but the stories need to be a bit more meaty and surprising if I'm going to keep up with it.
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 10:10 PM [Link to this post]
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home