10, Abadazad

10

A one-shot by Keith Giffen and Andy Kuhn.  It’s a Battle Royale variation - Ten people are given guns, with the name and address of one of the other contestants.  Standard last person standing rules, along with the “if no deaths occur in X hours, one contestant is randomly eliminated” motivator.  

With only one prestige format issue to tell a complete story, Giffen doesn’t have a lot of time to convince me that I should care about any of the characters.  I’m just as confused as the main point of view character, which prevents me from really enjoying what’s going on. Giffen also shows what the “has no moral problems with killing everyone” member of the bunch is up to.  That rambling, drug-addicted psycho crosses paths with the ostensible hero in the last few pages, and realizes that the lone survivor isn’t going to win anything but a trip to jail. Which is how it all ends: Hero kills psycho, doesn’t have any bullets left to kill himself, and gets arrested for the murder of nine other people.

It’s all very pointless, and the execution isn’t sharp enough to salvage what could have at least been a decent thriller/action piece.  The game itself isn’t interesting enough to justify the lack of background - Who set this up? Some of the players knew each other - Why?  Is this going to happen again? To what end?

This could have been something like 100 Bullets - A seemingly simple conceit that blossoms into something far more intricate and complex.  (Though I still think that 100 Bullets should have stayed with the self-contained stories and not lost itself in the Byzantine plot.)  We’ll never know, but I probably wouldn’t have cared enough to find out anyway.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck (Cutting)

Abadazad 1-2

JM DeMatteis writes his version of Alice in Wonderland, with a splash of Promethea.  A high schooler discovers that the children series she read her little brother years ago was based on an actual girl and a fantasy world that really exists.  That ‘Alice,’ now an old lady, gives our hero the means to enter Abadazad. So there’s Chronicles of Narnia, Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan in there too.  I bought this back in 2004 because the reviews said I should, but I don’t think I even read them the first time around.  

Aside from Narnia, I’ve never been super enamored of this genre of books.  Abadazad continues my disinterest, and I drop these issues with ease.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Boring (Cutting)