This week’s main reviews is the return of an old favorite with Adventureman: Ghost Lights #1. Plus, the Wednesday Comics Team has its usual rundown of the new #1s, finales and other notable issues from non-Big 2 publishers, all of which you can find below … enjoy!
Adventureman Ghost Lights #1
Script: Matt Fraction
Art: Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson
Colors: Terry Dodson
Letters: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Image Comics
Review by Beau Q.
…and welcome back to the Adventureman show, Adventurefans. Not an Adventurefan yet? Maybe soon you will be.
After an extended break from print, Matt Fraction and Family Dodson’s pulp exploration into the intersection of yesterday’s heroes, today’s legacies, and tomorrow’s futures returns for the first of five issues. Or rather, the first half of a two-part series of five issues. Adventureman Ghost Lights makes up the climax and finale of the current affair from Adventureman Vol. 2’s A Fairy Tale of New York. If you are sufficiently confused or feel that the barrier to entry is all over the place, you’re in luck! That’s how it is for the Adventurefans who have been left waiting since May 2022. Stuff happens [like, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters] and the direct market is a cruel, cruel world.
Good news: much like the organized chaos of Claire Connell and Family Connell’s adventure life, Adventureman Ghost Lights #1 rakes us directly into the coals as this ghost train takes off into the climax of the Ghost Empire arc. Look, Team Adventureman’s decision to hinge an arc’s ramp-up at the end of one print run and the arc’s climax at the beginning of another print run is a gamble set on hooking readers with impactful in media res storytelling, and possibly for trade readers aiming to get a luxurious Adventureman hardcover, but direct market fans tend to suffer as a result.
Bad news: as Adventureman Ghost Lights #1 exists as a jumping-on point and the culmination of several plot threads, much of the moments zip right along leaving little to no breathing room for the Adventureman cast to luxuriate in this neo-pulp NYC. Really, the entire issue is a last-words style villain monologue voiced over the collapse and compression of character arcs. This can be rad as hell for those in the know, but it can also be isolating for readers used to the pace of Adventureman’s previous proceedings.
None of this would really matter to trade readers and direct market re-readers in a couple few anywho if it didn’t affect the meat of the book, but alas. Fraction paints the world with overwrought New Yorkisms and, for Fractionphiles, a retreading of imagery, ideas, and symbolism you can find in works like Casanova: Avaritia, Satellite Sam, and Fraction/Dodson’s 2011 Defenders run. Much like that Defenders run, Terry and Rachel Dodson use every opportunity to overstuff pages with complicated compositions that wreak havoc on the eyeline simplicity, but Adventureman still moves classically with windblown hair and big, floaty bodies smacking into one another.
In portraying so many complicated ghost lighting effects, Dodson’s lineart quality weakens in some areas from strokes to scratches. Marry the bombastic shot selection to a third of the issue being comprised of splash pages, and the page economy squishes in multi-character scenes rather than breathes comfortably. Terry Dodson gets a lot of use out of mint green, which adds a ghostly visage to the palette and helps offset the Underworld elements from the lavender and pale blue of Adventureman’s holiday time NYC. Crafting a cold-looking warm palette is not easy, but Dodson pulled it off with aplomb, so much so it’s a shame that the silhouettes and composition compete for attention behind it creating graphically confuddling pages we have to visually sift through to parse out.
Never one to deflate before a task, Clayton Cowles chooses to drop balloon edges when dialogue bubbles butt against panel edges, which prioritizes the Dodsons’ layout instead of popping out over it. That signature mint green also gets recycled for the ghost font and their balloon strokes, which atop a white balloon could be visually inaccessible to some for its brightness, but does efficiently sell “ghostly” for those that can partake. With as much content as Fraction wanted to spell out and the Dodsons flooding every page with nuanced interior design decisions, Cowles does his best to keep the pageflow basic, but it’s still very chaotic in the moment to moment.
For a series with so many big ideas and larger than life characters, Adventureman Ghost Lights speedruns its indulgent lifestyle to feed us the climax promised in the cliffhanger, and preps us for the arc finale, but in doing so oversells and underdelivers. Hopefully the next outing finds its feet in the wrap up or else this adventure won’t be continued [for me, at least].
Wednesday Comics Reviews
Acid Chimp Vs. Business Dog #1 (AHOY Comics): This one-shot visits My Bad character Acid Chimp and Billionaire character Business Dog and culminates in a story written in two parts with different writer and artist teams bringing their own storytelling flair to the issue. The first part, written by Bryce Ingman and illustrated by Peter Krause serves as an acid filled homage to Home Alone with Acid Chimp functioning as a Kevin McAllister and it’s a fun and light setup for part two. Krause’s art is a treat only made better by the colors of Chris Chuckry and the letters of Rob Steen, who color and letter the both parts. Mark Russell writes part two with Steve Pugh as the artist where we get to see the titular characters directly interact as companions of sorts while dealing with financially motivated attempts on Business Dog’s life. Pugh brings a charm to the visual comedy at play and ultimately all the pieces come together to create a fun issue whether you’re familiar with the characters or not and features two prose short stories; “Nice Leg” by Bryan Ingman with art from Carol Lay and “The Rats of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Tyrone Finch with art from Richard Williams. —Khalid Johnson- The Sacrificers #6 (Image Comics): The Sacrificers concludes its first arc this week in a satisfying way that sets the stage for more story to come. I’ve been intrigued by this book from the start, and now with a full arc done, I’m outright a big fan of it. It felt a bit Hunger Games-y at the jump, as I suppose most fantasy-leaning sacrifice the youth narratives would right now, but the quality and imagination of the visuals have really made this its own thing. The sacrifice-the-young stuff remains (hey, it’s right there in the title), but the presence of gods and the fantastical exploitation for a smaller group of individuals (rather than for an entire layer of society) builds it out into something new. There’s some really bold choices made with characters and plot twists, too. In the end, though, I would recommend this comic based almost entirely on how good the action and characters look. It’s just a visual stunner. The Sacrificers is written by Rick Remender, illustrated by Max Fiumara, colored by Dave McCaig, and lettered by Rus Wooton. —Zack Quaintance
The Prog Report
2000AD Prog 2364 (Rebellion Publishing): The Prog Report is back this week, right in time for the start of new Judge Dredd, with Judge Dredd: A Better World, scripted by Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt, illustrated by Henry Flint, and lettered by Annie Parkhouse. And man is this beginning an intriguing stunner. It lays out ideas around police reform and innovation, while Dredd himself rides around on a motorcycle and has some tension with other judges who he deems not as loyal to The Law as he is. And, with Flint’s artwork, it looks absolutely amazing. I’m looking forward to following this one in the New Year, but should add that if you’ve been waiting for the right jump on point, this is probably it. As always, you can nab a copy of this week’s Prog here. —Zack Quaintance
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