The Autumnlands: Vol One Tooth and Claw
Written by Kurt Busiek
Art by Benjamin Dewey
Image Comics
The Autumnlands is a book I had to give a try based on the rather diverse reaction I have seen it get elsewhere.
That said I am not usually swayed by others, so I went into it with an open mind.
I was a bit surprised how much I liked it in general.
I say that since I do not normally gravitate to anthropomorphic titles, although I do seem to have found a few of late; Squarriors and Wild’s End coming to mind.
Now Benjamin Dewey’s art is quite good, and in this case writer Kurt Busiek at least seems to have a reason for the use of humanized animals. He has created a world which we are at least led to believe is a future of our own world, or one very much like our own.
The animals are in charge and magic has held sway for ages.
The magic is waning through, and a wizard sets off on a plan to draw a hero from the stories of their past to the present to help re-establish the magic force.
That hero happens to be a human, in a world where they no longer exist.
Not a bad premise, and it does work well enough.
But there is a fly in the proverbial ointment.
While most of the animals live the good life in floating cities, there are the bison of the plains.
They live an impoverished life eking out an existence from the land.
At the same time they are exploited by the cloud dwellers.
Now if this is sounding a lot like Native Americans being exploited by early white settlement — right down to the broken English accents — then you are right.
It’s so obvious it cannot be a coincidence.
And that leaves an uneasy question; is this supposed to be a way to refocus attention on a dark aspect of history?
Or is it just a tool used in bad taste to further the story?
Either way it does leave a cloud over the story line.
The Fade Out: Vol #1 - Act One
Writer by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Image Comics
By now, if you have followed my humble reviews at all, you will have realized I am a pretty big fan of writer Ed Brubaker, at least his noirish works.
So I went into The Fade Out with high expectations.
And I’ll be honest by the end if this volume, (it collects the first four regular run issues), I wasn’t exactly sure how enamoured I was with the title. I will interject here that by the end of Vol. #2 I was deeply in love, but it was not at first sight as they say.
Brubaker, helped along as is often the case by Sean Phillips great art, explores a different world for this noirish title. He delves into the often seedy world of Hollywood at the time of the Communist witch hunts. It was a time of powerful studios covering up all manner of sexual deviance, drug use, and murder, or at least that is the take Brubaker presents.
Now I’ve never been a movie star worshipper. I really don’t care who is sleeping with who on set, or showing up stoned at some inane awards show.
So the world was not one I was immediately drawn too.
But this is a story that is a long one. It grows from issue to issue, and the deeper you go into the series, the seedier the world Brubaker lets the reader glimpse. It becomes a car wreck effect. You know you should not be looking, but you just have to. You want to know what is happening in the dark of the studio sets.
None of the characters are particularly likeable either. They all have secrets, warts, flaws. Again think mangled cars in a freeway crash.
But you do want to know what happens to the budding starlet with the husband banished because he does not fit the ‘image’ being put forward to the studio.
You are vested in what happens to the writer haunted by the war, his love of a dead actress, leaving him unable to put words on the page.
So he turns to a drunk, disgraced in Hollywood.
The pair is so flawed, yet they want to take on the establishment, if they can find the courage in a bottle somewhere.
It’s a big picture (no pun intended) story Brubaker is telling here, and we should settle back with some popcorn and relish the show.
