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THE HAUNTED #1
Recommended (7/10)
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Chaos! Comics
Writer: Peter David
Pencils: Nat Jones
Inks: Kevin Conrad & Rich Bonk
Colors: Todd Broeker
Letters: Comicraft
Editors: Mike Francis & Brian Pulido
Price: $2.99 US/$4.69 CAN |
I'm not what you call Chaos! Comics's target market, but a new series by Peter David always gets a look from me. The Haunted reminds me a great deal of Spawn and books like it in visual style and narrative approach, crossed with a bit of what Augustyn and Ramos are doing over in Out There. It's a high school drama mixed with horror elements and a sense of humor, which sounds like Buffy the Vampire Slayer but really doesn't read very
much like it. David has set up an intriguing cast of characters and a suitably
spooky mood, and while I wasn't completely grabbed by the first issue, I was
interested enough to be curious about where they go from here.
The book reminds me of a lot of different things: Out There, Spawn, Midnight Nation and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are just a few, off the top of my head. David has always had an element of pop-cultural reference in his work, and you can see that here, as he has drawn from a number of well-known sources for The Haunted premise. This
strength means that he has grounded the title in likable and entertaining ideas,
but it also means that it doesn't feel as fresh as it might have.
The other strength that David
has always had, though, is a focus on characterization, and that is what really
makes the Haunted work. Desiree, the lead character, is very well-developed
despite not fitting into any of the easy stereotypes of a high school kid. She's
not the most popular, not the most outcast, not a jock, not a brain, none of the
easy classifications; instead she's like most of the kids most of us went to
high school with. Only she can astrally project and has a mean kung-fu kick. She
also gets to play narrator, and gives us an intro into the less developed but
still intriguing remainder of the class, including the quarterback with drug
problems at home, the feral outsider girl and the popular cheerleader who has
been dragged into the mix.
It's too early to guess at
whether this will skew closer to horror or super-hero territory, but David seems
to be playing with elements of both. In many ways, this is a standard "gathering
the team" issue seen in almost every super-hero team comic, and the mysterious
mentor Stitch plays right into that familiar pattern as well. However, there is
definitely a horror tinge to the book, as the students all have abilities of an
eerie nature. I was especially impressed by the scenes of Cliff Cross, the
quarterback, using his abilities to frighten his sister.
In fairness, though, a lot of that mood and creepy style comes from the artwork by Jones, Conrad and Bonk. Their work reminds me of some of the work Angel Medina did for Sam and Twitch, helped along by coloring from familiar
McFarlane Productions colorist Todd Broeker, who does a really nice job of
combining high gloss with moody darkness for his coloring job. Though the figure
work is sometimes a bit overly stylized, leaning towards anorexic forms, for my
taste, in general I was pretty pleased by the artwork.
Though you can draw pretty clear parallels between this book and similar books like Spawn and Out There, if I
had to choose one book within that general type to pick up, this would probably
be the one I'd pick.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board. |
