Hack/Slash issue #7!
Hack/Slash issue #7 (written by Tim Seeley, from Devil's Due Publishing) shipped on January 2nd, which makes three months in a row of a totally reliable, totally predictable publishing schedule. Since a lot of better-known books aren't managing this particular trick (I'm looking at you, Astonishing X-Men), this is absolutely MADE OF WIN. Due to a small ordering snafu at my normal comic book store -- Flying Colors Comics and Other Cool Stuff of Concord, California -- I was unable to get the new issue until yesterday, when I braved the wilds of Berkeley to obtain it from Comic Relief.
Yes. This is a book I love so much that I'm willing to plan entire afternoons around traveling to another city in order to buy it. For the serious. Behold my obsession, and note that this is the first comic book I've been this devoted to in years and years. It's just. That. Good.
Issue #7 sees the introduction of a fresh new guest artist, Rebekah Isaacs, filling in for the normal artist, Em Stone. While I really hope to see Em back soon -- her sabbatical started with issue #6, leading to last month's awesome Archie parody -- it's nice to see that the book is in good hands with Rebekah. She hits the ground running, busting out page after page of incredibly detailed, grounded artwork. That's really an important word when it comes to describing the way she hits this book: grounded. The things she draws have weight and heft. Her people look like real people, not posable dolls being walked through their paces by an unseen group of children. You can tell Cassie and Lisa apart at a glance, not just because they have different hair colors -- their faces, expressions, and bodily proportions are distinct and very realistic. That realism serves this book incredibly well, because when you can believe Cassie and Vlad picking apples or shopping at the 7-11, it becomes a lot easier to believe them fighting the forces of darkness and getting the crap kicked out of them in the process. The art's not perfect, but it's damn good, and I trust her with these characters.
On to the story! Something sinister is brewing at a Massachusetts college, where young women are, apparently, having group orgies in a really big hot tub as part of a secret club. Given that a) being in this comic is basically the same as being in a slasher movie, and b) the title of the storyline is 'Tub Club', this is inevitably Not Going To Be A Good Thing. The only question is whether these girls are going to be villains or victims -- or, just to make things more fun, a mixture of the two. Being part one of three, this issue doesn't give us any answers, although it does give us a rather ominous name: Elizabeth Bathory. Given that in Bathory's time, girls who had sex with girls were still virgins, well...this doesn't bode terribly well for their survival statistics.
Cassie and Vlad, meanwhile, are doing their usual between-jobs getting by, picking apples to make enough money to buy food, ammo, and cellphone minutes...which Cassie is largely using in talking to Georgia (from the previous storyline, collected in Hack/Slash: Friday the 31st), much to Vlad's dismay. Somebody's got a crush, and somebody's jealous! And given that this storyline looks likely to be fatal to any and all virgin lesbians who wander into range, somebody's about to have some serious issues.
Chris and Lisa are settling into co-habitation, and they've got a couple of new cases for our heroes to examine. One involves a bodiless skin found abandoned in a field -- foreshadowing the return of Ms. America, anyone? -- and the other involves, of course, a college in Massachusetts. This can't go well. And it really, really doesn't.
This issue is largely set-up -- the first act of the movie -- but it moves well for all of that, keeping things snappy and interesting enough that it doesn't really matter that not all that much really happens. I'll almost certainly be re-reading it when issue #8 comes out, just to see the pieces start to fall together. The dialogue is crisp and believable, the characters are all behaving in their natural ways, and it's just a fabulous read.
I give Hack/Slash #7 four out of five chainsaws. Body count zero, but that's okay; act one doesn't need bodies. Act one just needs to set the stage. Really, the only bad thing I can say about this comic is that since it's part one of a three-part story, we won't be getting the next trade paperback until April at the earliest. There are worse things to complain about.
I can't wait for issue #8.
In other fun Hack/Slash news, they printed the lyrics for my song of the same name in this month's letter column! I've never actually made a comic book's letter column before, although I did get a thank-you in an issue of Dorothy.
Today, I feel like a real geek.
Yes. This is a book I love so much that I'm willing to plan entire afternoons around traveling to another city in order to buy it. For the serious. Behold my obsession, and note that this is the first comic book I've been this devoted to in years and years. It's just. That. Good.
Issue #7 sees the introduction of a fresh new guest artist, Rebekah Isaacs, filling in for the normal artist, Em Stone. While I really hope to see Em back soon -- her sabbatical started with issue #6, leading to last month's awesome Archie parody -- it's nice to see that the book is in good hands with Rebekah. She hits the ground running, busting out page after page of incredibly detailed, grounded artwork. That's really an important word when it comes to describing the way she hits this book: grounded. The things she draws have weight and heft. Her people look like real people, not posable dolls being walked through their paces by an unseen group of children. You can tell Cassie and Lisa apart at a glance, not just because they have different hair colors -- their faces, expressions, and bodily proportions are distinct and very realistic. That realism serves this book incredibly well, because when you can believe Cassie and Vlad picking apples or shopping at the 7-11, it becomes a lot easier to believe them fighting the forces of darkness and getting the crap kicked out of them in the process. The art's not perfect, but it's damn good, and I trust her with these characters.
On to the story! Something sinister is brewing at a Massachusetts college, where young women are, apparently, having group orgies in a really big hot tub as part of a secret club. Given that a) being in this comic is basically the same as being in a slasher movie, and b) the title of the storyline is 'Tub Club', this is inevitably Not Going To Be A Good Thing. The only question is whether these girls are going to be villains or victims -- or, just to make things more fun, a mixture of the two. Being part one of three, this issue doesn't give us any answers, although it does give us a rather ominous name: Elizabeth Bathory. Given that in Bathory's time, girls who had sex with girls were still virgins, well...this doesn't bode terribly well for their survival statistics.
Cassie and Vlad, meanwhile, are doing their usual between-jobs getting by, picking apples to make enough money to buy food, ammo, and cellphone minutes...which Cassie is largely using in talking to Georgia (from the previous storyline, collected in Hack/Slash: Friday the 31st), much to Vlad's dismay. Somebody's got a crush, and somebody's jealous! And given that this storyline looks likely to be fatal to any and all virgin lesbians who wander into range, somebody's about to have some serious issues.
Chris and Lisa are settling into co-habitation, and they've got a couple of new cases for our heroes to examine. One involves a bodiless skin found abandoned in a field -- foreshadowing the return of Ms. America, anyone? -- and the other involves, of course, a college in Massachusetts. This can't go well. And it really, really doesn't.
This issue is largely set-up -- the first act of the movie -- but it moves well for all of that, keeping things snappy and interesting enough that it doesn't really matter that not all that much really happens. I'll almost certainly be re-reading it when issue #8 comes out, just to see the pieces start to fall together. The dialogue is crisp and believable, the characters are all behaving in their natural ways, and it's just a fabulous read.
I give Hack/Slash #7 four out of five chainsaws. Body count zero, but that's okay; act one doesn't need bodies. Act one just needs to set the stage. Really, the only bad thing I can say about this comic is that since it's part one of a three-part story, we won't be getting the next trade paperback until April at the earliest. There are worse things to complain about.
I can't wait for issue #8.
In other fun Hack/Slash news, they printed the lyrics for my song of the same name in this month's letter column! I've never actually made a comic book's letter column before, although I did get a thank-you in an issue of Dorothy.
Today, I feel like a real geek.