Chances are, you haven't heard of Jordi Bernet. He's a Spanish artist whose work has been limited to publication in Europe for the most part and in some comic strips. He followed in his father's footsteps, and his style is bound to appeal to those comics readers today who are fans Darwyn Cooke's work, Eduardo Risso's or Howard Chaykin's. Here's the surprising bit: Bernet's been at it in this business for more than four decades. He's done little work in American comics, and this is a great opportunity to sample the efforts of a seasoned professional who knows how to tell a story... no matter what the genre. That introduction to his talent, combined with the delicious variety in this anthology, make for a wonderful read.
The brief bio included lists among Bernet's influences Alex Toth, Frank Robbins and the artists on adventure comic strips of the 1950s and onward, and it's easy to see those elements in his work. The book also lists Joe Kubert among those influences, and personally, I felt that one was one of the most prominent in his work... or at least in the work presented here. The art on Andrew Helfer's "Old Dog/New Trick" reminded me so much of Eduardo Risso's style that at first, I had assumed the story was written by Risso's frequent collaborative partner, Brian Azzarello. The Azzarello-penned Batman story in this book allows the artist to demonstrate what a strong influence Frank Miller has had on him; his Dark Knight definitely takes some cues from Miller's Dark Knight Returns.
As the cover suggests, there's definitely some cheesecake leanings in Bernet's style. His female characters are deliciously voluptuous; they're not rake-thin supermodel types. One needn't worry about the female sexuality element overwhelming his art. It factors into only a couple of stories in this anthology.
The strongest story in the book is Helfer's tale of four aged revolutionaries and their manipulation of a prison population. I'm pleased to see such well-realized characters and clever plotting from the writer given the weakness of the debut issue of his new Batman limited series, Journey into Knight. Joe Kelly offers up an interesting storytelling experiment in "Drive," but I don't know that the experiment was a success.
It seems to me that these volumes afford DC the space to provide much more biographical information about the artists on which they focus beyond the single page and few paragraphs provided. A magazine-style article that really gets in-depth into the artist's backgrounds and influences would be welcome. It would also be interesting to read how other artists have been influenced by the Solo subjects and to learn of the creative processes those subjects employ to ply their craft. 8/10
