A bevy of talented folk team-up for a brand new comic magazine at Image Comics. You get two stories for the average price of one, and more! Don’t you just love a bargain?
Written by Steve Niles, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
Illustrated by Kevin Mellon and Phil Noto“AMERICAN MUSCLE,” Part One
by STEVE NILES & KEVIN MELLON
The world ended a long time ago. How it happened exactly and what exists in the wasteland have always been a mystery. Now Chloe, Gil and a gang of rebels have escaped the last human stronghold and are blazing across Post-Apocalypse America in search of paradise.“TRIGGERGIRL 6,” Part One
by JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JUSTIN GRAY & PHIL NOTO
In this sci-fi thriller, the sixth in a series of genetically modified assassins born in a secret laboratory sets her sights on the ultimate target. But what happens when the perfect killing machine takes a personal interest in her target only to uncover a conspiracy that may change the fate of the entire human race?PLUS! An interview with NEIL GAIMAN! Triggergirl cosplay! Con photos! And original articles all celebrating the creator-owned spirit of independence!
We don’t get very many comic magazines here in the states; or rather, we don’t get a lot truly worth reading. There’s “Dark Horse Presents,” which is probably the apex of widely-available anthology comics in the US, but beyond that I struggle to come up with the names of many more comics of a similar starter put out by publishers with recognizable names (so, not including independently published books). It’s an odd occurrence and a bit of a shame, really. You’d think that, with the market for comics being what it is alongside the economics of comics, more people would’ve figured out that the best way to make comic prices more palatable would be to offer more bang for your buck – or at least more content.
This is where “Creator Owned Heroes” comes in. A bit of an experiment in that its a brand new American comics magazine with brand new concepts and characters, the book combines a bevy of talented folks with two 11-page stories (that are parts of a whole) complete with a nice collection of backmatter, including explanations of where the book came from, recommendations for creator owned books, an interview with Neil Gaiman and some stuff on cosplay with Juli and Alex Abene. It’s a jam-packed 40 page magazine that screams “Hey, comics should be good!” at you and means it sincerely.
The first of the book’s two stories is “American Muscle,” the Niles-Mellon joint. A post-apocalyptic road story, “American Muscle” finds a group of friends (or what can be assumedly called a group of friends in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, anyway) driving through the ruined wastelands of the country towards what they assume will be a new land to live and be prosperous in. “American Muscle” is a mystery without actually introducing a question; instead it’s a story that beckons you in with an inherent sense of familiarity while creating a landscape all of it’s own. It’s a completely open-ended story with infinite room to grow as it plays off of just enough tropes to be “familiar” for the benefit of concept while forging a path all of it’s own. “American Muscle” may seem familiar in a few ways, but that’s only because you’re not looking closely enough.
Niles and Mellon make a great creative pair. To use a car metaphor, it would seem that Niles is merely providing the map for driver Mellon while Mellon cuts loose and drives full speed ahead, blazing a trail of pure and unadulterated comic as he goes. Mellon’s sharp pencils and dirty colors here bring the grit and grime of the wasteland to the convenience f your home, and given the importance of the cars to the story, Mellon’s inclusion of the car as a tool for panel structure is a clever and welcome addition to the book. Niles, on the other hand, is pulling from the best of every road movie and post-apocalyptic tale you can think of in a Borderlands meets Two-Lane Blacktop kind of way. A sharp script with well-matched artwork, “American Muscle” is post-apocalyptic America at its best.
Continued belowThe other comic offering comes in the form of the latest Palmiotti/Gray story, “Trigger Girl 6”, this time with Phil Noto on art. It’s an intriguing little sci-fi story about a girl groomed essentially to be a killing machine, and while this story doesn’t get too much into what we can presume would be the overall plot, it does serve to give us a story that explains why you want to read “Trigger Girl 6” in the first place. It’s actually a really clever story on behalf of Palmiotti/Gray; they’ve essentially just given us an advertisement for what the character can do, if not any good reason as to why. Assuming Six is being sold to the highest bidder fr purposes against her own will, it’s a smart way to establish the rules of the game by not only giving the story it’s kick-off in a showing of her skills but also as an example of “This is what we’re capable of here” before things turn sour. We develop a connection to Six because we now see literally ever facet of her life, or what we can assume it to be, and that relationship fosters a sense of compassion within the reader to see what happens to her next without weighing everything down with too much exposition. It’s just enough, and it’s just right.
Of course, the winner of the Stand-Out Award for Excellence is Phil Noto’s art. The entire “Creator Owned Heroes” book is a fantastic collection of words and pictures, but it’s hard not to be immediately drawn in by Noto’s stylish artwork and astonishingly vivid sense of color. What’s most impressive about “Trigger Girl 6” here is that, in this day and age we’re so blatantly used to the objectification of women in comics that drawing a “sexy” character in poses has become almost standard for some books. Yet Six, who is ostensibly a literal object being used for actual nefarious purposes and who about spends four pages naked, never comes off as a female character designed for male gaze. Sure, she’s a character with a nice figure, and yet the art is designed not to titillate but display a facet of her character as she goes from sleeping drone to assassin. It’s handled beautifully by Noto, and it remains my favorite sequence of the issue for these reasons alone.
The rest of the book is nice, though largely hit or miss. It’s tough to “review” a list of someone else’s favorite movies of 2012 (or rather, it’s tough to do that without sounding like an opinionated jerk), but the backwater does serve to give the entire comic magazine added value. If you’re looking for a book that gives you time for your money, that introduces you to some concepts you might be unfamiliar with or that opens up your mind to the wide world of comics (the Gaiman interview is particularly enlightening), you’ll be hard pressed to find a better value than “Creator Owned Heroes” this week.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Definite buy
