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Jonas Scharf

Basilisk

The supernatural Basilisk reunites the creative team of Bone Parish, which was a favorite horror series of mine. This time the action moves to Appalachia, as a group of five killers emerge from the secluded mountains.

This group of five works together with a hive mind, each part of a chimera, in essence, a monstrous hybrid creature. They all have a power related to the senses: Vanessa, the leader who has the power of touch, bombastic Jimmy who has the power of taste, quiet Manny who has exceptional hearing, flower-child Cara who has the gift of smell, and hooded Regan whose power of sight is deadly to those who she looks at. Regan’s power relates to the title of the series for if you are aware of old legends,  a basilisk is a legendary reptile reputed to be a serpent king, who causes death to those who look into its eyes. While some of these powers (esp taste and smell) didn’t strike me as particularly deadly, I trust that author Cullen Bunn will build an interesting story.

Regan has escaped the group and the cult followers, but Hannah, a woman bent on revenge captures her. Hannah is a grieving mother, whose daughter and husband were killed in an early attack by the chimera group when they came down from the mountains into her small town. With nothing left to lose, Hannah wants to kill the group and Regan seems to acquiesce to her demands. Manny also seems to want to pull away, and whispers a prophecy to Regan before he is killed. But the other three plan to dig in, and have an easily manipulated brethren of followers who will obey them.

The art by Jonas Scharf is top-notch, as his work always is. He captures the natural beauty of Appalachia and portrays its inhabitants realistically. Alex Guimarães’s coloring is evocative with blue and dark colors predominating. There are some striking variants at the end, especially Rafael Albuquerque’s covers.

While this first of a planned trilogy didn’t grab me as much as the first volume of Bone Parish did, I am still intrigued enough to find out what happens to the killers and their followers and hope that Hannah gets the revenge she craves.

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Top 5 Comic Artists

I previously shared my Top 5 Comic Authors, but who are my Top 5 Comic Artists? Let’s see!

Gabriel Rodriguez

Locke & Key is among my favorite graphic novel series and is penned by Joe Hill (on my Top 5 Authors list) and illustrated by the crazy talented Rodriguez. He brought the supernatural evil that the Locke siblings were fighting to life, and the recent Netflix series tried their best to replicate the amazing world that Rodriguez had created on the page to the screen. He designed a believable world, with each page brimming with detail. This duo is expanding the Locke universe and I am ready for it!

Mike Norton

I first discovered Norton as the illustrator of the eight-volume rural noir series Revival. Norton perfectly captured the inhabitants of a Wisconsin town that get caught up in a supernatural mystery. His line work is excellent and he knows how to capture the essence of characters. I recently read the anthology Superman: Red and Blue and they saved his illustrations for last as it was the best of the bunch. He is also known for his fantasy Battlepug series. I had the pleasure of meeting him at a C2E2 convention I attended a few years back and he was very charming!

Jonas Scharf

I first fell in love with Scharf’s work in the Bone Parish trilogy but also admired the one-and-done Warlords of Appalachia. He captures a gritty realism in characters that few artists can. I will be reading the supernatural trilogy Basilisk soon, another collaboration with Cullen Bunn (found on my Top 5 Authors list), so I can immerse myself again in Scharf’s world-building.

Fiona Staples

Saga would not be Saga with Staples! I noticed on volumes seven-nine that she was given first credit, and I applaud that because in graphic novels it is often the art that makes the story. Staples’ visuals are top-notch and while Vaughn’s storytelling is superb, it would not be the same sci-fi space epic if not for the illustrations. I am thrilled that after a multi-year break, Saga is back at it, and I look forward to admiring the new alien worlds she creates as the second half of the story unfolds.

Wendy Pini- the QUEEN!

ElfQuest is my cornerstone in the comics world. I was introduced to the World of Two Moons by my highschool boyfriend (now my husband!) and I fell immediately in love with this elven tribe. Artist Wendy Pini and her husband Richard Pini began this fantasy series in 1978 and wrapped it up in 2018- 40 years later. When I was introduced to it in the early 1990s, I eagerly read older copies and then kept up with it going forward. There were some experimentations with other artists for some of the branching-off storylines, but it was only Wendy Pini that I would accept as the artist. She defines ElfQuest and despite some good storytelling by her husband, I love ElfQuest solely because of her exquisite work. Long live the Queen of comics!

Honorable mentions: Faith Erin Hicks (but she was in my Top 5 authors, as she is a double threat!) Matthew Roberts (Manifest Destiny), Emily Carroll (Through the Woods, Out of Skin, and Speak), Skottie Young ( I Hate Fairyland) and Jeff Lemire (Roughneck, Essex County and Secret Path).

Who are your favorites, and why???

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Bone Parish: Volumes Two & Three

Happy New Year!  Last January, I read the first volume of Bone Parish and loved it and I said in the comments: This series was like Briggs Land and Locke & Key got married and had a child. While early in the year, this could be one of my contenders for Best Reads of 2019. Considering it did make my Best Reads of 2019 list, how do the two concluding volumes match up?

To recap the premise of the first book:  “A new drug is sweeping through the streets of New Orleans—one made from the ashes of the dead. Wars are being fought over who will control the supply, while the demand only rises” and the Winters family of New Orleans has discovered how to manufacture the ashes of the dead into a powerful hallucinogenic drug that lets the person snorting the drug to experience everything the dead person lived through when they were alive.

Volume Two:

This book opens with the funeral of Wade, the youngest of the four Winter siblings, who was killed by a rival cartel who wants to take over the Winter’s ash business. You see the guilt, resentment, and anger that the surviving family members harbor, as they all cope in different ways. Unfortunately, this tragedy doesn’t seem to bring them together, instead, it drives them farther apart. Brigitte works on developing a new strain of ash in her laboratory to punish those that killed Wade and want to take over their business, while other cartel scientists try to create ash themselves with horrifying results. New villains are introduced while the Winters family struggles to stay ahead of the game.

I find the family dynamics fascinating- as Grace treats her daughter Brigitte with an icy aloofness as there seems to be no mother/daughter bond, Brae shows only disdain towards Leon whom he blames for Wade’s death while also being cruel to his sister and mother. Only Leon shows compassion for his family as he is the one that remembers that their dead father told them that family loyalty was all-important. As we work towards the conclusion, the reader can’t help but observe that creating this drug and building the drug empire is dooming their family.

The art and coloring remain as strong as ever. The visuals at the funeral tugged at your heartstrings, along with the monstrous consequences for the people who ingested the bogus ash from a rival cartel. The layouts of the panels guided you through the story, with effective coloring to show flashbacks.

Volume Three:

Alliances and betrayals between the Winter family and their rivals continue to evolve, with Brea unknowingly getting seduced by a bloodthirsty killer intent on getting revenge for her brother being killed earlier by the Winters. Leon begins to make some power moves, and he and his sister Brigitte experiment with how to tap into other people’s memories to look for clues. Leon barely survives the experience and his visions are suspect, although he views them as true. While I had considered him the most moral of the family, he then sacrifices someone during the gang wars.

We get a flashback to Brigitte introducing the idea of marketing the ash to her parents and I was shocked to realize it hadn’t been too far in the past. The Winters had lived in modest circumstances up until then, so the mansion and opulent surroundings that they lived in now were but recent acquisitions. But knowing that family members were already paying the price, was it worth it? She is literally playing God, trying to use her scientific knowledge with the mysticism she learned from a dead lover to cheat death. Things are spinning out of control with each family member operating separately and not uniting as their father had wanted them to. It all comes to a head, with a tragic conclusion, and fittingly, not everyone survives.

Jonas Scharf’s art was fantastic start to finish, with Leon’s visions being especially well-done. I have to say colorist Alex Guimarães’ work is the best I have ever seen. His vibrant pinks and purples to signify the hallucinogenic effect and the color palette that he uses throughout the narrative are second to none. I hope to see a lot more from this artistic team.

I was very impressed with the three-volume series, in fact, I wish it lasted longer, as I’m sad to be saying goodbye to the enigmatic Winters family. This necromantic horror story had it all- it was a riveting crime thriller and it had a thought-provoking moral debate about drug culture and the sanctity of life and for the body after death. A must-read for all graphic novel readers!

-Nancy

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Warlords of Appalachia

Another Goodreads suggestion was spot on for me- as this gritty dystopian tale had a timely political message that spoke to me.

The premise of the story: Set in the near future, a corrupt dictator has been voted in as president, which plunges America into the Second Civil War. Afterwards Kentucky refuses to rejoin the nation, leaving them a demilitarized zone and caught in the cross-hairs of the fascist leader who will do anything to bring these rebels into line. In the midst of this, mechanic and former soldier Kade Mercer reluctantly becomes Kentucky’s de facto leader as he leads his townspeople into the woods to escape from a military attack. Mystery surrounds his silent young son, who is kidnapped and held as ransom by the army, and in regards to the “blueboys” who live hidden in the mountains.

There are some interesting threads running throughout the narrative that were intriguing. Drug addiction is a very real problem in parts of Appalachia today, and author Phillip Kennedy Johnson incorporates drug addiction into the story as physically manifesting in people, turning them blue and zombie like. Political extremism and hero worship tie into President Roth’s portrayal, with uncomfortable parallels to our current president. There is also a religious aspect, as those following Kade have tied him to being “The Messenger” as foretold by the Prophet Luther. Both sides fanaticism doesn’t bode well for a meeting in the middle.

I was unfamiliar with author Johnson’s prior work, so I looked him up and found out that he is a musician in the Army. This explains his familiarity with the armed forces and their inner workings, plus the beautiful folk-like songs that begin each chapter. I was captivated by these songs and sang each aloud, reminding me of my mother’s family from Indiana and Kentucky. On a personal aside- I have retained a bit of my family’s Appalachian/southern vernacular, as I say crawdad instead of crayfish or crawfish, soda instead of pop, and I pronounce the diphthong /aɪ/ as ä making words like tired sound like tarred. I tease my kids by saying I swan instead of I swear, as my Grandmother used to. All of these little connections made me appreciate this story even more, as I imagined some of my family as these rebels.

Another huge reason as to why I enjoyed this tale was the art. Massimo Carnevale, who did all the cover art for Northlanders, drew this cover. He is a master of picking up the theme of the story and representing it in a way that is sure to grab your attention. I recently loved Bone Parish, so I was pleased to find artist Jonas Scharf as the main artist of this graphic novel too. Scharf captures the look of Appalachia and it’s inhabitants, while also realistically rendering the military scenes. Colorist Doug Garbark also adds to the mood by using a muted color palette to show the weariness of the people during the brutal occupation.

An afterword by the author gives some insight to the story, and perhaps should have been at the beginning to give some clarification to some of the threads I mentioned earlier that were at times confusing. I have not seen a continuation of this story, which is a shame, for I got sucked into this plausible world, and would like to see Kade and the other Kentuckians fight for freedom. This is too important a story to let go of and I hope Johnson and Boom Studios will be able to continue this series.

-Nancy

Johnson, Phillip Kennedy, Jonas Scharf & Doug Garbark. Warlords of Appalachia. 2017.

6

Bone Parish

Cullen Bunn has created a new dark and dangerous graphic novel series, and this necromantic horror story grabbed me on the first page and never let go.

A quick synopsis: “A new drug is sweeping through the streets of New Orleans—one made from the ashes of the dead. Wars are being fought over who will control the supply, while the demand only rises.”

The Winters family of New Orleans has discovered how to manufacture the ashes of the dead into a powerful hallucinogenic drug that lets the person snorting the drug to experience everything the dead person lived through when they were alive. In charge of this operation are Grace and Andre, with their four adult children. The oldest, Brae, is chomping at the bit ready to take over the enterprise and questioning his mother. Brigitte is the scientist who is the only one who knows how to turn the dead into ash properly and won’t reveal to others how to do so as to keep her position in the family safe. Leon and Wade end up doing much of the grunt work for the family, with both of them questioning the morality of it all.

As the popularity of the drug grows in the Big Easy, other drug cartels realize the scope of the operation and want in on the action. Several contact Grace with offers of buy-outs but she refuses. Not surprisingly they don’t take it well, and put a target on the family’s back. Some dirty cops are also involved, with Brae trying to control that aspect, but double crosses are part of the game.

There are a few twists and turns in the narrative, with a surprising revelation that will make you back track to look for clues. The story has potential for a thought provoking moral debate about drug culture and the sanctity of life and for the body after death. My excitement for this new series rivals what I felt for Briggs Land, another layered crime saga with an intriguing family led by a strong woman.

The art by Jonas Scharf was perfect for the story, and was reminiscent for me of Gabriel Rodriguez who illustrates the Locke and Key series, which is high praise indeed from me. He establishes the Winters family in a distinct manner, showing a welcome diversity within the family, in addition to when he draws other characters and realistic crowd scenes. The colorist Alex Guimarães really sets the tone with the coloring with an earthen palette for the everyday life, and vibrant pinks and purples to signify the hallucinogenic effect.

As much as I loved the story, I have a few criticisms. The big one: how is the drug controlled by the user? How do they tap into the specific memory of the deceased, as they would have a lifetime of memories to choose from? How do memories from the past physically manifest in those who are taking the drug? Will this be explained, or do we just have to have suspension of disbelief and go with the flow? Also, while I love that Grace is portrayed as a powerful and still sexy matriarch of the family, she looks too young to be a mother to her children, especially Brae. I, myself, am a mother to three teens and I still want to be thought of as a hottie, but Grace should be realistically aged just a tiny bit more.

I believe this new series has a lot of potential for growth and I absolutely will be reading future volumes, as I wish to find out what consequences are in store for the Winters family and those who choose to take the drug. Thank you to NetGalley for approving me to read this novel early, as I believe this series could really take off after it’s release in March.

-Nancy

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