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Review: She Could Fly – The Lost Pilot #2

By Brax 5 years ago

Berger Books/Dark Horse’s SHE COULD FLY is an astonishing exploration into the realm of human psychology and mental health. If you missed the first mini-series (2018), you will need it to best appreciate and understand Luna’s journey. The second, mini – SHE COULD FLY: Lost Pilot – starts off where readers were left at the conclusion of the first arc. Luna is in a mental hospital and the amazing cast of characters that Chris Cantwell and company have developed around her, are worse for the mental wear that accrues to the kinds of things they have all experienced up to this point.

At the center of the story is Mayura Howard, a mysterious woman who made significant advancements in technology that allowed her to fly – until that tech failed her. Luna bore witness to Mayura’s ascendance, but her own unusual mental state was altered/enhanced in the process. So far Luna has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and by the time we get to the second issue of “The Lost Pilot” the good doctors have added hypomania to the list of mental challenges she is facing. The unpronounceable meds she is being prescribed feigns a sense of light-heartedness, but this book is weighty in all of the right places. There are government conspiracies, international espionage and plenty of heads that get blown off. But the substance of SHE COULD FLY resides in the minds of its characters, many of whom suffer from mental maladies that in our real world would be ignored or (over) medicated, but in Cantwell’s world, mental health (or the absence of it) is depicted through a compellingly holistic frame.

Chapter Two of “The Lost Pilot” opens in a dream sequence in the mind of Luna. One of Luna’s abilities allows her to commune with the dead – or at least think that she can commune with the dead. In the opening dream sequence she sits “Indian style” with Joan of Arc as they eat yellow wallpaper and talk about boys throughout history that they may or may not like. It’s a brilliant opener – even for a series that has too many classic panels/images to recount in one review. Martin Morazzo and Miroslav Mrva have given this book a distinct look that always feels familiar. Its as if the visual art of SHE COULD FLY is actually in on the mind-bending effects of the story, except that the art works those effects on the reader as much as it does on the characters in the story itself.

There is an important research paper/project to be written about this dream sequence with Luna and Joan of Arc chatting and eating the yellow wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was published in 1892. Yet it still resonates as a referendum on how mental health is (mis)treated and particularly how women who have mental health challenges are treated in medical institutions and by the society in which we live. There is much more to say about this short story and these panels from SHE COULD FLY.

This will read as hyperbole. It isn’t. The author’s note section of this series, “In-Flight” is the bravest and at times the most powerful addenda that any writer is making to their work in comics right now. SHE COULD FLY’s value does not rely on Chris Cantwell’s “In-Flight” notes, but readers will be edified and inspired by them. Here’s a snippet from #4 of the first story arc: “[T]here’s this idea going around that comics can’t be good and about real things and reflect the real world at the same time (unless the characters are white men). I just want to say that’s bullshit. Stories are power, and empowering. Drama assembles the simultaneous chaos of life into order, or at least some semblance of meaning. And when I say that, I don’t mean it’s a message, I mean it’s a mirror.” 5/5!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Writer: Christopher Cantwell
Artist: Martin Morazzo
Colorist: Miroslav Mrva
Editor: Karen Berger
Cover Artist: Martin Morazzo

Review: Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #7

By Jeffrey Bracey 5 years ago

STORY

As a long time Dr Who fan I was very eager to read my first ever Dr Who comic. I know that Dr Who has been had runs in comics for many decades but I just never saw any growing up and of course with the tv shows they weren’t as much of a priority to me. But now we live in an age where many properties are licensed by comic companies and its easy to find pretty much all of your genre favorites in floppy format. My enthusiastic expectation however, was dulled by boring story and uninspired artwork.

Im a big fan of giving new readers the needed info to jump into a comic whether by way of some sort of introductory paragraph or within the context of the story being told. In this series we get said paragraph plus a nice little bio on each of the min cast and even the Dr’s vehicle the TARDIS. From there the story ambles along with the Dr and friends pursuing yet another alien threat through time and space and not a whole lot else happens really. The comic is trying very hard to be an episode of Dr Who but things that work in a tv show sometimes do not translate well into a comic. The Dr is often a source of a great deal of expositional information in the series but those info dumps are easy to swallow because of the charismatic actors chosen to play the Dr over the years. In a comic book format there is a need for things to happen to maintain the energy and excitement that a tv show can achieve with camerawork, performance and lighting. Without these things in play the script just becomes a lot of talking heads on mostly static panels. It takes a really gifted author to pull this sort of thing off in comics and unfortunately Houser doen’t have the sort of chops that writers like say Neil Gaimen bring to the table. I just couldn’t make myself care about what was going on as I read this book.

Even worse the story was completely predictable. It really reads like an episode of the show that I’ve already seen but executed less well. The Dr’s dialogue is quirkily superior as she goes about explaining events or deceiving former allies but it doesn’t express the charm of the character while doing so. It just felt like a pale imitation of the punchy speeches the Dr is known for. Every beat of the plot is foreseeable and even when the Dr gets a little preachy trying to protect a species feeding on humans by saying they are carnivores it falls flat. The Dr and crew justify this be commenting out how they’ve each had meat for lunch without acknowledging the fact that they aren’t eating sapient beings or why these aliens can simply feed on common animals. The story logic just fails utterly.

ART

The art is flat, boring and even lazy. Characters are often drawn with expressions like they just caught wiff of a dirty diaper and consistency is random. I spotted several times where the artist reuses the same drawing with either slight or no modifications to save some time on the book. Don’t ask me why though because there are no real backgrounds to speak of. Particularly in the outdoor scenes where looks like everything was done with a stock pack of woodland Photoshop brushes. There is no depth in the entire comic. The colors are murky and most of the characters are so stiff that I can only think that the artist is working from photos.

LETTERING

Why are there three letters on this book? Yeah it’s dialogue heavy but not beyond the scope of a single letterer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Forget this book and go watch the tv show or dig up some of the older Marvel Dr Who comics. 1 out of 5!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

REVIEW: DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTENTH DOCTOR 7
Writer: Jody Houser
Art: Roberta Ingranata
Colors: Enrica Eren Angiolini
Color Assistant: Vivian Spinelli
Lettering: Richard Starkings, Sarah Jacobs, John Roshell

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