Review: Gallows Men #1

STORY

Omen Comics is an indie publisher and I always appreciate the chance to review indie books, especially fresh new talent. Normally when I get a comic or series I’m unfamiliar with I appreciate a precurser page that fills me in one what has gone before or gives me a little blurb about the comic, however with Gallows Men I found this to be detrimental instead of helpful. In this particular case I’m presented with both an overview of this company’s universe, called The Omenverse, and some filler on who and what the Gallow Men are, and this is kind’ve unfortunate. Part of the joy of reading something comepletely new like this is the discovery that comes alog with exploring a new series. In this case there is no reveal of these details page by page in the usual narrative fashoin but instead a major amont of world building is done in this expository parge. It’s fairly disappointed and quite the missed opportunity. Look to films like Star Wars or Highlander where the opneing crawl/information gives you just enough to allow you to get right into the story and still allowing for the story to expand upon this natually. I think perhaps if it had just been on paragraph instead of two that I would not have felt cheated of the experience.

Story wise things are unfortunately inconsistent and a bit difficult to follow. Even after reading through the comic a couple of times there are still a couple of scenes that are a bit baffling, particularly in a flashback involving a graduation massacre. I’m not sure how that fits into the plot at all. Transitions between scenes is also jarring forcing me to reread pages to make certain I was in a new scene and not in a flashback Which leads to another problem with the comic, its got a lot of moving parts to it. There are seven major scenes playing out with 3-4 plot lines going through them. This is a LOT for anyone to handle as a writer and usually something better handled by seasoned pros like Alan Moore or Frank Miller and the author struggles to get this across in a concise way, though this is partly the fault of the art but more on that later. The story just appears to hop around all over the place and while it all comes together at the end it requires a reread to make sense of it all, and that is a failure in terms of story telling in my book.

ART

The art is not that great. Its not awful, but its not great either. The art style is pretty unpollished and a but rough. The artist does’t appear to know how to use line weights in their inking to add clerity and depth to their panels. A lot of the art is quite stiff and I suspect that this is due to the heave use of photo reference and a comic actor to work things out. This leads to the sort of static panels that are the hallmark of someone like Greg Land, which can end up being flat and lifeless. When the artist breaks away from this instantly apparent, There are many times where I wasn’t certain what was going on as it was’t communicated properly though I think this was a fault of both the writer and te artist.

Its not all bad though. There are many pages where the layout of the page works quite well and the flow is easy to follow. Thankfully the artist also makes an effort to vary up the camerawork with interesting and cinematic angles to make the pictures more interesting visually.

LETTERING

I will commend the lettering on this book. The word ballows are easy to follow and never get in the way of the visusals thanks to good placement.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I think the idea behind Gallows Men has potential but it just didn’t deliver in any meaningful way. 1 out of 5!

GALLOWS MEN #1
Writer: Michael Nunneley
Art: Awosika Tosin
Comic Actor: Mike Gabler
Letterer: Guido Martinez
Publisher: Omen Comics