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Friday Recommendation: Nick Spencer Overdrive

By | February 18th, 2011
Posted in Columns | % Comments

When I started reading comics, it was always the characters that I gravitated to when deciding which books to read and which to not. As I got older, my priorities shifted to the creators behind the stories themselves and it would be a lie if I said there were some creators I gave more allegiance to than others. However, no writer in the past year has skyrocketed to my “must read everything they put out” list faster than Nick Spencer. After hooking me with Morning Glories and melting my eyes out of my face with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, I took a look back on his strikingly young career before I knew who the hell he was. What I found were three unique books with three unique, but undeniably similar stories, all collected into trade fairly recently by Image’s Shadowline imprint: Existence 2.0/3.0, Forgetless and Shuddertown. Click below for my rapid fire, three for one rec-fest.


Existence 2.0/3.0

The way these two sequential mini-series were collected, its hard for me to really view them as two separate stories as opposed to one story with a big time gap in the middle…and I suspect that was the point all along. 2.0 opens with morally gray scientist extraordinare Sylvester Baladine meeting his untimely demise. Of course, this is only the beginning of our adventure because as of the bottom of the first page, Baladine existed within the body of Marko, the mysterious assassin that killed him. It is then that we are introduced to consciousness transferring and the two scientists that perfected it and yes, its exactly what you imagine that phrase would be. In this world, science is no longer limited by simple morals, and with the right amount of money, anything is truly possible.

Following this simple premise, the story’s high stakes espionage action is constantly juxtaposed with an intense investigation into the meaning of identity and morality in a world where such things mean something VERY different than they have in the past. It’s hard to not read this book and not absorb some of Spencer’s own personal philosophy and ideology, which is immensely profound on several occasions. Plus all the sex and violence that occurs as Sylvester (and Marko) track down and exact their revenge on the ones that put the hit out on Sylvester (and who intentionally set Marko up to become a prisoner in his own mind.)

3.0 takes place five years after 2.0 and stars Marko, Baladine’s wife Helen and the only living survivor of the consciousness transfer program, Baladine’s 13 year-old daughter (inhabiting the body of Marko’s decidedly NOT 13 year-old sister Marina.) It seems the trio is now on the run from several insidious agencies that want to perfect consciousness transfer themselves and need Jenny to do so. A simple premise, however I feel 3.0 functions a little less strongly than 2.0 if only due to the mysterious telepath/teleporter/omnimorph who’s origin is never even remotely explained. While the actions were just as fast paced and high action, I felt there was a little less personal philosophy and a little too many “holy balls!” moments thrown in (to the point that they became slightly ineffective.) That said, the cliffhanger ending was not even remotely easy to see coming, and redeems the whole second story in a myriad of ways.

Ron Salas handles the art duties for all of 2.0 and the majority of 3.0, with Joe Eisma coming in to finish the series off. Both artists have a distinctly angular, Sean Phillips-y style to them that fit the story quite well. The crisp, slightly warped style allowed for legitimate portrayal of movement on the page, and with the type of high momentum action being portrayed, it services the story very well. In addition, the depth and use of shadow provided by the inks and colors suited the dour ambiance of the story to a T. Moreover, I have to give a great amount of credit to Joe Eisma for making the artist shift nearly seamless. Had I not been familiar with his immediately recognizable character composition due to Morning Glories, I may not have known Salas was off the book. That level of consistency and workability is rare in comics, and should be commended.

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Overall, I haven’t read too many action oriented comics that also contain a distinctly philosophical slant to them, and it makes this book a strong recommendation to anyone interested in either.

Forgetless

If there were one term to describe Forgetless, it would unquestionably be “bleeding-edge modern youth.” I suspect this was Spencer’s intention, but this book is absolutely tiered to a very specific kind of reader (which I am approximately half of.) Much like existence, Spencer manages to insert yet another fresh take on the conventional assassin. This time around, he introduces the idea of creating assassins that do not need alibis or doctored backstories to make them seem like regular joes. Instead, the regular joes become trained assassins by an undeniably shady organization. Enter: Sonia and Sara, two aspiring models recruited by this organization simply because no one ever expects to be gunned down by a 90 pound aspiring model (or, I do…but thats just me and my inherent distrust of humanity.)

However, the concept itself is not where the book finds its identity, but rather its backbone. The true identity of the book stems from the age group and subculture it exists within, held together by a fictional DJ night called “Forgetless.” As someone who worked in college radio and witnessed countless DJ nights pop up and pitter out over the course of my undergraduate career, to say I was familiar with the vapid, egotistical but still somewhat charming nature of the subculture would be an understatement. DJ nights, despite appearances, are not just any other night in any other club. Each night develops its own legends and own identities, almost becoming living, breathing entities in and of themselves. That said, I feel the identity of Forgetless was not truly defined or played with as much as it could have…mostly since the story was not about the club itself. However, having the main story exist on the periphery of this event is also weirdly reminiscent of the culture. Once a night gets big enough, and enough newbies make their way to it, no one really remembers the night or the DJs behind it and usually get themselves lost in the music and the culture.

Of course, there are plenty of bleeding-edge cultural references all over the book as well (one of the most prevalent storytelling motifs used was Tweetie, a “don’t sue us even though the comparison is obvious, please” version of Twitter.) While some critics may harsh the book’s dialogue and almost unending stream of particularly web-based cultural references (everything from Winona Ryder to G-Chat to Facebook to Mylie Cyrus to Craigslist.) However, I challenge you to take a city bus in any populated metropolitan area and find a gaggle of young, pseudo-trendy kids NOT lingo-ing their mouths off and namedropping things all over the place. Yes, its annoying and vapid and none of the characters earn any kind of deep emotional attachment, but it sure as hell is accurate. Now, the wildly inappropriate viral webseries and the sex addicted TV host in a koala costume…those are a little harder to make real-life connections to. That said, this is fiction, a little indulgence is kinda the point.

I feel two things really weaken the book, namely the wildly different art styles of W Scott Forbes and Jorge Coelho and the seemingly random way in which they alternated pages really brought me out of the story. I’m not sure what the story was there, but if you have to have artists alternating on a single issue, A) make their styles compatible and B) dear lord divide their work up by scene and not page. On top of that, Forbes Joshua Middleton-esque style fit the book’s general ambiance MUCH better than Coelho’s rougher, more cartoony, less-chique style. Second, I feel the B-Side stories about the three Jersey teens trying to get into Forgetless were a little less charming than the main story. Don’t get me wrong, it was certainly cute, but I’m not sure it projected the right kind of hopelessly fake, addicted to culture attitude of the main story very well, which made it a bit of a throwaway tale.

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Overall though, its supremely rare for comics to adequately represent modern subcultures, and even more rare to do so when music scenes are involved. However, books like Phonogram, Lil Depressed Boy and (parts of) Local succeed immensely and, despite it’s rough edges, Forgetless can be added to that list as well.

Shuddertown

It’s hard to really talk about this particular hardcover due to the abrupt nature of the series’ indefinite hiatus. Most noticeably because of the fact that there is no real ending…or any ending for that matter. The story kinda just stops. I know these first four issue were intended as the first arc of, I assume, many to come, but given the as yet unrevealed fate of the continuation of the series, I’m not sure I can really talk about the book in terms of the story it tells since, without an ending, its hard to know what the true nature of the story even is.

However, there are still quite a few things to like here. The first is Spencer’s grasp on the basic concepts of noir and supernatural mystery and the second is Adam Geen’s art. The story does a fair bit of time bouncing, but the conflicted, suave nature of the book’s protagonist Isaac manages to shine through and anchor the events of the book. As a cop he is certainly damaged, but not quite crooked yet, and it makes the scenes of personal conflict pretty engaging as we can’t quite figure out which was on the life spiral he’s headed (though down is the most likely answer.)

He exudes grit and pure machismo almost to the point of caricature, but thats much the point I think. For better or worse, Spencer is playing high status with the conventions here and for the most part, it works. On top of that, the mystery being explored is wonderfully unique but still, as yet, undefined. It’s hard to judge the sum total of a mystery story without knowing the conclusion, but the lack of said conclusion definitely leaves me wondering and, more importantly, actually CARING about the outcome, which is a sign of good storytelling.

However, a story told within this medium is only as good as the artist that brings it to the page, and Geen’s work here is absolutely stunning. The Alex Maleev/David Mack influence on his work is impossible to not notice, but despite the similarities he works within the style admirably. The colors and shading created the perfect ambiance for the book and photo-realisim brought a certain identity to the book that it really benefited from (although I don’t know if James Gandolfini was the best pick to base Sam on though.) However, its not just the characters and backgrounds, but the way that he overlays panels and juxtaposes images borders on the experimental and really pushes the medium to its absolute limits.

This is a great story so far, to the point that the fact we’ll likely never see an ending doesn’t diminish the overall package completely (though it is a point of serious concern, mind you.) However, the “so far” were the operative words in that sentence. While the elements present in the story certainly dictate future greatness, the way the volume closes makes it impossible to pass any solid judgement…yet.


//TAGS | Friday Recommendation

Joshua Mocle

Joshua Mocle is an educator, writer, audio spelunker and general enthusiast of things loud and fast. He is also a devout Canadian. He can often be found thinking about comics too much, pretending to know things about baseball and trying to convince the masses that pop-punk is still a legitimate genre. Stalk him out on twitter and thought grenade.

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