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AMERICAN CENTURY #7
"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"
Mildly Recommended (6/10)
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DC Comics/Vertigo imprint
Writers: Howard Chaykin & David Tischman
Pencils: Dick Giordano
Inks: John Stokes
Colors: Pam Rambo & Jamison
Letters: Ken Bruzenak
Editor: Shelly Bond
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
With American Century, Chaykin and Tischman have created a
1950s filled with scumbags of various stripes, where nobody seems truly innocent
and even our hero is a bit of a lowlife. It's hard to truly enjoy this book,
because I don't want to root for any of them, and the constant sexuality of the
whole thing feels out of place with what the creators are doing. It's also hard
to dislike it, because the setting, the plots and the characters are so unlike
most comics. There are a lot of characters and plots going on, and it seems as
if Chaykin and Tischman have overloaded the book a bit, but I can't deny being
fascinated by this dark world they're showing us and wanting to see the
explosive finale as all of these disparate elements come together.
I remember Dick Giordano coming on to do a fill-in issue of Birds of Prey, and how amazed I was
that he could so mimic the flow and style of the regular artist. He does the
same here, such that I didn't even notice until the second read-through that
there was a different artist. He maintains the same feel that Marc Laming has
been giving the book, which includes the positive effects of incredibly real
settings and the negative effects of characters who are very hard to distinguish
from one another. Despite having a guest artist, I continue to have the same
problems and praise for the book as usual in the art department.
That's true of the writing as well,
actually. While Chaykin and Tischman do a nice job this issue of clearing up who
all the characters are and what's going on with them, the sheer amount of
characters and the numerous goings-on make this look like a book made for trade
paperback format. As in the best pulp stories, every character has a long and
complicated backstory, and when you're dealing with almost a dozen characters,
that means that four issues can be too little room for too much information. To
their credit, the writers manage to make every character pretty distinct in this
issue and to explain what everyone is after, even without using much "cheating"
in the way of their omniscient narrator.
One of the most impressive things about the
book is how effectively Chaykin, Tischman, Laming and Stokes are creating a
dingy view of the world. Gangsters beating up a gossip columnist, slimy
comedians raping little girls, a Mexican whore blackmailing her way into
Hollywood stardom and senators trading in sex for favors are all elements of
what's going on here. Even though Harry is meant to be the hero of the piece,
he's a womanizer and someone who will let many evils pass beneath him if they
don't directly concern him. It makes it hard to sympathize, but it does provide
a compelling viewpoint.
I also continue to have the same complaint
about the sheer amount of sex in the book. You can't go two pages without
finding a reference to sex of some kind, and most of it is wholly unnecessary. I
can understand the creators trying to give the idea that this seedy underbelly
exists in 1950s society, but Chaykin is in danger of falling into the same
pattern that Garth Ennis is falling into, needlessly recreating his own familiar
cliches so that his once-charming style becomes a tired parody of itself.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
