Review: Soul #5

When I started cracking into the fifth issues from Double Take, I discovered that several of them were more in line with a first issue than a fifth issue. And hey, that’s a good thing. How often do new readers and publishers complain about that very aspect of comics? Then I remembered Soul, which had a fantastic fourth issue and it took three issues to get there. The thought of this issue rebooting to a first issue status was not exciting for me. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The issue does still manage to recap new readers and give some context to the story, but still manages to continue the interesting thing about the fourth issue, which I will now spoil for you.

Ben, one of our few characters to come from The Night of the Living Dead, is stuck repeating the same day over and over. He continues to wake up the morning of his death in the film. The fourth issue revealed several situations in which Ben didn’t make it out and ended back up at this starting point. In this issue he makes a different choice and decides to barricade the basement. To his and our surprise, the couple that went crazy in the film are alive/undead and similar to the gammas. The question is… will Ben make it out of the basement alive?

As I’ve said in a previous review, I really do get the impression that things are fluid in the creative decisions for all of the Double Take titles. For instance, the first three issues gave only one possible hint of Ben’s situation and really it was more of a hint to what was up with the dead husband. The fourth issue was great, but it was almost as if they kept writing bigger and bigger scenes and got to the point that they didn’t like where Ben’s story was going. So they hit the reset button. And I’m okay with that. Granted, this is all speculation on my part, but I liked being back in the basement and seeing Ben taking on a supporting cast because he seemed like he needed it.

The writing is on point in this issue. I enjoyed the dialogue and having Ben express his pain out loud in a believable way. Also the characters that appear in this series are very consistent with their characterization in other titles. That’s key to the shared universe experience.

As for the art, it continues to improve on this series. That was one of my earliest complaints about this series, the art just seemed to struggle and contain a lot of filler. Now, we have rich backgrounds and a lot of details on the characters and items they interact with. The three colorists on the title also do a consistent job making it look like one colorist unless you’re really trying to pick it apart.

This was a series that I wanted to enjoyed, but didn’t. I stuck with it though because all of the books in the shared universe pose some intrigue to me. It’s an experiment in a way and I just find myself really drawn to it. I want to see what happens, how long it can be maintained and I hope that other comic readers are having fun and being entertained. Because Soul is now a very entertaining title that has risen on my Double Take pecking order.

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Soul #5 Story/Script: Michael Coast Layouts: Jonathan Ashley, David Reuss, Michael Oppenheimer Pencils: Ricardo Sanchez, Tomas Aira, Adriano Vicente Publisher: Double Take Comics Price: $2.50 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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Review: Slab #5

[su_quote]“Carol, Jane, how long have you known your father is a heartless bastard?”[/su_quote] Knees were slapped when I read that line. Slab #5 is a little all over the place, but in the way “all of the place” should be done. The story is frantic. The importance of what Dr. Kifo and Dr. Grimes are trying to do has never been clearer. We see that this virus or whatever you want to call it, is extremely dangerous and that all of their precautions might not mean a thing. But they had it under control until Alien Dr. Kifo and Dr. Grimes’ daughters decided they wanted to rescue animals in the middle of the goddamn zombie apocalypse. Oh man, was I annoyed by them and their friends.

“What are you guys working on the cure for humanity's survival? Well you killed too many puppies so now we all have to die!”

Not saying that we need to kill puppies, but I hate when logic is completely removed from a situation. I didn’t hate the story though. In fact, it made me want to read more. Enter this issue in which we see the aftermath of the events and Dr. Kifo and Dr. Grimes just continue to be cool as ice. Alien Dr. Kifo also gives Human Dr. Kifo a bit of inspiration which will have huge effects on the universe. Not just this series, but the universe. It’s also really gross which was great.

I will admit that I’m starting to get a little confused by who is an alien, a venus probe mutation (aka zombie), and human. Sure Dr. Kifo is easy to figure out since one is wearing one color and the other is wearing another color. Though it does irk me that no one has pointed this out. Like, “Hey, you found your clothes” and then suspicion is cast upon her.

The art is really consistent and overall great for the story. There were some more traditional panels in this issue, but also some adventurous panels. For instance, seeing through the mask of one of the characters, but then also seeing the reflection of her face in the mask. It was visually interesting and clever. The coloring is spot on. It really captures the era in my opinion, but overall its just good solid coloring which is nice to see.

How does that first line fit in with the rest of the story? You’ll see. It’s pretty much the line of the book, but while it’s important to the character development, the real reason to show up is for Dr. Kifo’s discovery. That alone is enough reason to read this issue, but the rest is no slouch and makes this one hell of an issue.

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Slab #5 Story: Bill Jemas, Michael Coast Script: Michael Coast, Brian Finkelstein Layouts: Stan Chou, Allen Watson, Dean Kotz Pencils: Joel Carpenter, Marco Cosentino, Ricardo Sanchez Publisher: Double Take Comics Price: $2.50 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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Review: Honor #5

I really came around on this series, but this issue takes me right back to the first couple issues in the series again. There’s a lot of action. Some humor. Officer Long is a dark, dark individual but ultimately that’s all I took from this issue. There’s a decent cliffhanger, but that’s really it. It did seem to be trying to include new readers, but whereas other Double Take titles have done this successfully, this one didn’t. What little has happened in this series is just thrown at you with very little context. The cops also kill a lot of old people which was funny, but I don’t know what it did for the story.

I suppose you could view this series as falling the fall or loss of control of the police, but they’re not falling fast enough. In fact, I feel like the police have been given a lot of freebies in how easily they’ve maintained control. There’s a lot of cops for this area and sure some have been deputized, but it still seems like a lot.

Overall, it’s the pacing of the story that really fails. We’re all over the place following this character and then this character and really all I care about are Long and Chief McClelland. For as much time as they’re in the book, their presence feels really forced. It’s almost as if there’s so much the police in this universe could be doing that they’re at a loss as to what to actually do. Again, the story was just underwhelming even for all the action and consequences of that action. It wasn’t enough to really hold my attention.

The art is definitely the roughest of the newest issue from Double Take. Particularly during the action sequence things fall apart and details in faces and backgrounds get lost. Everything looks extremely unfinished and it kills the impact of this scene. It’s all very inconsistent in general as you can see the hard shifts in art styles from the different pencillers. Usually you can tell a little and it’s not so bad or even noticeable, but here it’s a hard shift.

I’ve got one more in me for this series, but I’m really hoping it finds its focus. It has an interesting cast, some of which isn’t even mentioned here, but that’s not enough to keep my interest when the rest of the imprint’s books are hitting their stride. I said in other reviews that these fifth issues from Double Take feel like first issues. That’s previously been a compliment, but here it’s unfortunately not. This issue takes a huge step back from the progress it made in the past four and that’s a damn shame.

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Honor #5 Story: Bill Jemas, Michael Coast, Jonathan Ashley Script: Frank Ortega, Ian Deming, Bill Jemas Layouts: Jonathan Ashley, Stan Chou Pencils: Raphael Sam, Dennis Crisostomo, Jethro Morales, Novo Malgapo Publisher: Double Take Comics Price: $2.50 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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Review: Medic #5

Medic is a strange series. It’s not my favorite, but I don’t dislike it. It always manages to have these little nuggets of information that are important to the universe and so I’m left with half like and disliking the issue. I’m going to do my best not to talk about the other fifth issues (outside of this mention) because I do think these books stand on their own, but as a whole they’re an interesting experiment and almost work better when talked about as a whole. We’ll see how I do. The bulk of this issue is spent in the ER patching people up and waiting to see who gets infected. That’s really what I was waiting for and someone does. The results of that are pretty interesting but not the most interesting thing that happens in the book. That would be what the aliens are doing. The copy of Dr. Angela Kifo makes an appearance and her bosses… co-workers? Whichever, it doesn’t particularly matter, continues to criticize her efforts.

Alien Dr. Kifo does something but it’s not really clear what her goal was. Unfortunately, the rest of the characters in the book still seem really hollow. Nurse Fran barely makes an appearance and once again does what Nurse Fran does and sticks people with needles. The guy that grew his toes back bickers some more, but he’s otherwise unrecognizable and a bit performer. Dr. Bricker still doesn’t have much personality. He’s also not doing much other than actual surgeries and reading that in a comic isn’t as exciting as you’d think. I don’t know his role in the world yet and that bothers me. Perhaps in the next issue.

What is successful about the writing in this issue is that it comes across as a first issue. You don’t need to know anything about the first four issues to understand the story and be caught up on events. That and a new character/narrator named Kevin will catch you up at the front of the issue. He, along with several panels explaining events of the series, gives you all the backstory you need. It’s clever and useful, but ultimately not necessary for you to read before the issue. Seriously, you can just read the issue and you’ll be fine. I know everyone says that, but it is doubly true here.

The art was very good and surprisingly consistent throughout the issue. The series has had its rough patches before, but here it’s clean looking and has some great coloring. I don’t know where Double Take found all these talented colorists, but they better lock them down before other small publishers try to steal them away.

Overall this is a good issue but there’s still problems. Not a lot happens in this issue. We spend far too much time looking at dying people getting patched up. The aliens could have used some more backstory and Dr. Kifo and Dr. Grimes definitely could have used more pages as well. Their inclusion in this series is starting to feel pointless and I don’t particularly like that. Slab seems to be their main book so why bother with Medic? As I said, though, there’s always nuggets of info in this book. There definitely needs to be richer characters going forward or at the very least just make it so that Dr. Kifo is the star of one title and Dr. Grimes the star of the other because right now I tend to get Medic and Slab confused. We’ll see, though, but the art saves this issue from a lower score.

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Medic #5 Story: Bill Jemas, Michael Coast, Stan Chou Script: Michael Coast, Bill Jemas Layouts: Stan Chou Pencils: Stan Chou, Andres Ponce Publisher: Double Take Comics Price: $2.50 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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