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Review: Hero Comics 2011

By | August 5th, 2011
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Written by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, John Layman, Richard Starkings, Steven Perry, and Ralph Reese
Illustrated by Mike Dringenberg, Sam Kieth, Rob Guillory, Chris Ivy, Stephen R. Bissette, and Ralph Reese

Hero Comics 2011 reunites the original Sandman creative team for the first time in more than 20 years! Gaiman, Kieth, Dringenberg, together again at last! This is BIG! This is THE BEATLES getting back together for one final album-this is an event that is not to be missed! But that’s not all, we also have an exclusive CHEW short story by John Layman and Rob Guillory! Chew was one of the most honored and acclaimed books last year, taking the comics world by storm. Its meteoric rise included an Eisner Award for best new series of the year! Plus, we’ve got a beauty of an ELEPHANTMAN story by Richard Starkings and Dougie Braithwaite! Special bonus-Sam Kieth brings you a behind-the-scenes mini-memoir of how this Sandman-alum project came to be. Plus true-to-life experiences from comics creators who have personally benefitted from the Hero Initiative!

Chew and Elephantmen open the bill for the big reunion show of the original Sandman creative team — all for a good cause.

I admit that I’m not really sure how to review this. Hero Comics 2011 doesn’t play by the same rules as the average comic book that gets passed through for summary judgment — that is, it doesn’t keep the money you give it. It’s a benefit book for the Hero Initiative, with creators donating time and work in the hopes of raising money to help comic creators who’re down on their luck. (Christopher Ivy and Jason Craig contribute one-page strips expressing their gratitude for being helped out of homelessness and assisted with single-parenthood-complicated medical problems, respectively.) So I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place: do I pick it apart like I do a normal comic, pointing out what I don’t like and passing judgment on whether or not you should buy it, or use this review as what’s effectively ad space, exhorting you to throw four dollars the way of some people who certainly need it more than you (if you have four dollars to throw away on a comic book)?

Lucky for everyone, then, that this year’s issue is pretty damn good. Adam Hughes and J. Scott Campbell provide the requisite attention-getting girly covers, so as to let the consumer pick their preferred cup size. (The last Hero Comics, back in 2009, had a cover of Eve in the Garden of Eden, or Matt Wagner’s Grendel, letting consumers choose between giving in to original sin, or knife crime. Then again, some kind of new-age feel-goodery likely wouldn’t catch the attention of someone’s eyes wandering over the racks, for good or for ill. I dunno.) What’s also a little weird is that this thing is packaged and released by IDW, despite featuring short stories from two Image series, Chew and Elephantmen. Image is putting out its own charity book for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund later in the fall; still, there were no charity-capable IDW properties? (Then again, they license so much…)

The Chew story is cute fun, and the Elephantmen tale is mostly an excuse to gawk at how stellar Dougie Braithwaite’s art is when he cuts loose (this is seriously a career high for an extremely talented artist), with exceptional colors by Ulises Arreola. Still, while those might be the bait for the people who read their respective ongoing series, they’re not exactly integral tales to the ongoing continuity or whatever. Besides, they could sneak in six pages of Justice League #1 and it’d still pale next to the fact that Hero Comics #1 is the reunion of the original creative team of The Sandman: Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, and Sam Kieth.

Of course, this isn’t a Sandman story. It’s a morbid and morbidly funny poem by Gaiman, slight of narrative and rich in sensory details — the sort of thing you’d expect of Gaiman, given 5 pages to chart the course of. What stands out more than Gaiman’s Gaimanisms is the art — rather than penciling and inking the way they did on Sandman, Dringenberg and Kieth ‘layered’ paint over one another, in a more involved collaboration than the usual assembly-line procedure. The result is an ethereal, nightmarish landscape, where every identifiable figure is glimpsed through a hazy murk, like the last thing you see before you lose consciousness. It’s a short, inky little thing, but the craftsmanship is there in every panel, every wash of paint and judiciously chosen word.

The flipside of this work is a solo jaunt by Kieth, telling a vague but pretty tale of a kid, a koala, and a black cat building a boat. What gives these charming, cute pictures context is how Kieth captions the work with excerpts from the emails that circulated between the creators of the first story. The email chain is fascinating as the pictures are gorgeous — Kieth’s sometimes trembly style works perfectly with the tone of the conversation, especially as two artists who’ve spent twenty years apart, perfecting their craft in different directions, circle one another looking for the common ground that will bring it all back.

Here’s the thing: there’s no final verdict, no number rating, no whatever on this one. I say it’s worth $4, and even if you don’t want the comic because you don’t care about Neil Gaiman or Mike Dringenberg or Sam Kieth or John Layman or Rob Guillory or Richard Starkings or Dougie Braithwaite or Christopher Ivy or Jason Craig or Ralph Reese or J. Scott Campbell or Adam Hughes, it’s still worth it to throw some money the Hero Initiative’s way. Not to get all preachy or anything, but really, if you can afford the extravagantly-priced luxury purchase that is a comic book these days…


Patrick Tobin

Patrick Tobin (American) is likely shaming his journalism professors from the University of Glasgow by writing about comic books. Luckily, he's also written about film for The Drouth and The Directory of World Cinema: Great Britain. He can be reached via e-mail right here.

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