The Pickytarian

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February 25, 2005

Subway Reading: The Losers

This review contains minor story arc spoilers...

This review has been corrected. I had forgotten that Jock, the regular artist for this series, had been replaced by Ben Oliver for this arc.

Losers #21 - Ben Oliver can lay out a page like nobody's business. Viewed out of the context of a comic story, each page is still an example of dynamic and engaging graphic design. But more impressive is the way that he smoothly directs the reader through the harsh angles and borderless panels. If storytelling wasn't an issue, it would be a lot easier to set up a page that works together as one cohesive visual unit. Oliver shows the impressive and rare ability to simultaneously achieve both goals.

This two-dimensional perfection, however, comes at the cost of the three-dimensional story mechanics. Sometimes characters are distractingly shifted around on the "stage" from panel to panel. One example is the next-to-last page. Panel 1: Bank Woman and Mystery Man are sitting at a desk in an office. Panel 2: Clay almost enters the room; he is positioned outside the doorway. Panel 3: Closeup on Clay's face; he is surprised to see Mystery Man. Panel 4: Mystery Man has risen from his chair and punches Clay in the face. Clay tumbles backwards, falling over the chair in which Mystery Man had just been seated. How did Clay get from the doorway to the desk? During his surprised moment in panel 3? Between panels? It's not clear. There are a couple of other weird flubs, such as Clay smacking somebody with a laptop that had been in Aisha's hands up to that point. The very first page features somebody using a camera phone to see a person standing behind him. For this trick to work, the lens would have to be on the same side of the camera as the screen. As far as I know, the lens is always on the other side of the phone. All of these are minor nit-picks of course, and they shouldn't take away from Oliver's awesome drawings and compositions. On the other hand, the net effect of this many mistakes was that I could never really settle into the flow of the story.

Something else that keeps knocking me out of the flow of this story is Aisha's new sex-kitten personality. It's so blatantly out of character that I have trouble believing that Clay buys it. Or maybe he does buy it and he's just playing along to see what she is up to? If that is the case, I kind of feel like the reader should be let in on his suspicions. As it is, I'm just very confused by the whole endeavor. If she is being genuine, then I have to call out writer Andy Diggle for terrible characterization. If she's faking it, though, Clay would have to be the biggest knucklehead on two feet not to see through it. Am I the only person who is bothered by this?

Art-wise and story-wise, this book struck me as a great effort that was undermined by a few too many rough edges. A little editorial attention would have gone a long way in this case. 2.5 stars.

Posted by jdonelson_nyc at February 25, 2005 05:02 PM

Comments

Posted by: Johnny Bacardi at March 1, 2005 01:24 PM

Posted by: jdonelson_nyc at March 1, 2005 02:11 PM

Posted by: JB at March 1, 2005 10:01 PM

Posted by: Ben Oliver at March 4, 2005 06:37 AM