Comic Quickies or Image Domination

Who is Jake Ellis #2: If you aren't reading this comic yet, you should be ashamed.  Ashamed!

The second issue follows up the excellent first issue with equal quality and snappy story telling.  The issue opens with a mysterious flash back to some sort of laboratory and gives a few hints as to how the Jon Moore and Jake Ellis partnership came into being.  From there we also get some death defying escapes from police custody, and plenty of action.  We also see that Jake Ellis, the mysterious guy in Jon's head might not the guardian angel he seems, and might be manipulating Jon in certain directions...

Another awesome issue, and at this point one of my most anticipated comics.  The story is pretty damn captivating, and the art is cool.  I have high hopes for this five issue series.

The Mission #1: Another debut from Image comics.  This one is about Paul Haskell, a regular dude who, after a doctors appointment, gets accosted in the parking garage by a slightly creepy old man named Gabriel.  Gabe claims that Paul has been chosen to play a part in the battle between good and evil.  Paul's mission: kill Neal Corman within the next 48 hours.

Paul might think he's simply the victim of some elaborate hoax, but when Gabe starts delivering veiled threats that appear to be coming true, he decides to give the Mission due diligence and spend a day tracking Neal.  What he finds may change his life forever.

At first this one reminded me a bit of Killer of Demons but The Mission is clearly on the serious side of things, and looks to go a bit deeper into the psychological aspects, and be much grittier than Killer of Demons.  For two thirds of this comic I wasn't too impressed story wise, but the final third was pretty great, and did enough to get me to stick around for at least another issue.

Memoir #2: In this issue our intrepid investigative reporter, Trent finally gets an interview with one of the Lowesville locals, who unlike the rest of the townsfolk, claims to remember all the events that led to everyone in the town losing their memory.

In terms of shedding light on the mystery that surrounds this series, there are some pretty good nuggets here, and of course, while some questions are answered, the answering generates even more questions.

The problem here is the main character, Trent, is an insufferable douche bag.  I'm sure this is deliberate, but I really can't stand the guy.  Its hard to read this comic, because events are seen and told from his perspective, and it takes a lot of the fun away.  Even though I want to find out what happened to the people of Lowesville, it would mean that Treat succeeds in his mission, and I kinda don't want the guy to succeed because I hate him.  Anyway, reading should be fun, and Trent sucks some of that enjoyment away so I won't be carrying on with Memior past this issue.

Turf #1:   This was easily my favorite read of the week.  Turf, a five issue series, got the ball rolling over a year ago, but the fourth issue has only been out for about a week.  I wanted to check it out, so I picked up the first three issues and was VERY impressed.  Mobsters, aliens, and vampires.  Need I say more?

Turf is set in prohibition era New York City.  The city is more or less carved up into nice money making chunks by various mob families.  The mobsters run the city, and the police get a cut to look ther other way.  However, someone or something has started taking out entire mob families wholesale.  These mass deaths might be related to the Dragonmir family, a recent transplant from Europe, but aside from smuggling human blood rather than booze, they appear harmless.

Turf's narrative jumps around to various points of view, which provides an interesting multi-faceted view of the events taking place.  We learn a lot about the main players through the eyes of Susie, a determined reporter who is looking to crack a big story.  Aside from Susie the story offers two other main view points; Eddie Falco, a mob boss, and Stefan Dragonmir,a young upstart vampire with grand designs.

It is hard to put my finger on one thing that makes Turf awesome.  There are a lot of cool, an interesting elements, and surprisingly, they don't get in each others way.    Despite it being a five part series, I got the sense that things will be pretty epic.  Also, Turf is dense.  There is a lot of narration and dialog, it took me about an hour to read through this first issue.  At times, the amount of text can overwhelm the art, but there some pretty cool things going on in this issue, and lots of bang for your buck.  I'm looking forward to seeing what is in store for the rest of the series.