Kindred, Lazarus

Kindred 1-4

Regret buying: No.  I was young and impressionable and bought everything that Homage studios put out.  I liked Brett Booth’s art back then, and I still like it now. I like his combination of slender, ripped anatomy (all the guys look like marathon runners) and heavy inks.  (Mostly, I like how he draws Backlash. Talk about creating a character that plays to your strengths.)

Unsurprisingly, that lithe style works well with the Flash.

Would buy again: No.  Another comic you can add to the “horrible early Image writing courtesy of Brandon Choi” pile.  

I mean, that’s a 45-second monologue he’s giving there.  (Yes, I read it out loud and timed it. And it wasn’t fun, giving those lines a voice, filling a physical space with that wretched combination of words.  At least Frank Miller’s Sin City narration works on the page.)

I have no problems with a good rant.  But this is just exposition masquerading as some kind of opening statement to a trial.  Blech.

Sigh.

Apparently Black Razor training teaches you how to cover 5 kilometers in mere minutes on foot.

Also, Booth makes some questionable posing choices with his pencils:

Don't care how good a shot Grifter is, that pose can not make for accurate targeting.

I get it was the style of comic art in the 90s, but these Alicia poses are still a bit much:

Booth really likes his silhouettes.

I've never seen so much torn up pantyhose.

Would read again: No.  See above.

Rating: Stupid.  But I’m not cutting it.  Another Image title in my collection gets saved by nostalgia.  I’ve owned this for so long, I can’t bring myself to dump it. That’s literally the only reason it survives.   

Lazarus 1-6

Regret buying: No.  Greg Rucka is a fine writer, and I’ll usually give his stuff a shot.  Michael Lark is just as fine a penciller, and his art will never fail the flip through test at the store.  Quite the opposite, his covers for this series probably had a lot to do with why I would always pick it up for said flip throughs.

Would buy again: No.  The list of comics that I want to continue reading without buying is just growing and growing.  (Right now, it stands at DMZ, Unwritten, Black Magick, Ex Machina, and Lazarus.) Huh. That list of titles really mirrors the writers that I have on my internal tier 3 level of comic writers - Above average people who have really good story concepts, but occasionally stumble on either sustained follow through or execution.  Brian Wood, Mike Carey, Greg Rucka, Brian K Vaughan...Yeah, that sounds about right. I also wonder who would be in my tier 2. I haven’t thought about it until now.

Would read again: Yes.  I zipped through these issues really quickly, and not because they’re slight on content.  I really enjoy reading about Forever Carlyle, and Rucka’s created a world of fascinating inter and intra-family politics.  Not enough to buy the trades, but I can see myself being convinced otherwise.

Rating: Pretty good.  A bump up from my initial Nice rating.  (I score these immediately after reading, and sometimes I talk myself into a different rating as I write.)  I can tell that I lost interest the first time around the same time I did today, when Rucka started writing about the regular people in the Carlyle empire.  Sometimes it’s fun to read about the little guy, but this is not one of those times. Still, it’s an engrossing situation he’s set up here, and I’m pretty sure I’ll return to it sometime in the future.