Salvagers

Staff: Bob Salley, George Acevedo, Delfine Siobhan-Kanashii

Overview:

Caution: Hardcore scifi slummy greatness inside

Review:

So Salvagers comes to us from Hound Comics who has a pretty good rep and I’ve been looking to check out a comic or two from them. I picked up Salvagers #1 and can’t wait to dive in.

So these guys are pros. I read that comic without even blinking I think. 28 pages gone in a flash. Salvagers is about, you guessed it, salvage... but in space. At first it vaguely reminds me of the series planetes (If you haven’t seen that, stop reading this and treat yourself to an episode or two) but by the end the only things I could really liken it to were Firefly and Star Wars. A rag-tag crew of high-risk salvagers scour the stars for a few legitimate jobs. We join our crew as they are attempting to salvage a warship. When the ships security measures start kicking in, things go FUBAR. Don’t want to give anything away because it’s a solid comic but the real star of the comic is the characterization. The characters and their interactions with each other is a lot of fun to read and you can tell by the way they talk that they have been slumming in on these crummy jobs for a while now.

The art is professional, no questions asked. Top notch grade A USDA approved comic art. The color and proportions were consistent, the dynamic action spot on, and the perspective creative and indicative of the action. If there is one complaint I can make it is the lettering, it switches for various reasons (com chatter, synthetic voice, etc) and sometimes that is for the worse. A few times the type got kind of close to the edge of the speech bubble and I really felt like it wasn’t on the level of the awesome art this comic has.

Sorry for the short review this time, but I don’t have a lot of critiques for this one. Love it, go check it out.

Metrics

Art: 9/10 (100% Grade A Comic Art)

Lettering: 4/10 (Sloppy in a few places)

Plot: 6/10 (Characterization is the strong point here)

Novelty: 6/10 (Nothing groundbreaking in novelty but an instant classic.)

Overall: 6.25/10

Review from: Indiecomicreview.com

Average Jo

Staff: John Pross, Derek Adnams, Julius Abrera, Bryan Maganaye, and Brandon Bullock

Overview:

Solid story, awesome artwork.

Review:

So today’s main dish is Average Jo by Hound Comics. It’s got a slick cover and an “adult” warning on it so what could possibly bad about it? Well, let’s find out!

I mentioned this a while back in my Spectrum review; if a comic’s description starts off by telling us the race of our protagonist- it seems to absorb a lot of the focus on the comic. Average Jo starts off by saying, “Meet Jo Hamilton. Jo is a Filipino-American police officer in the city of Eden...” To be honest- unless this comic is going to be deeply entrenched in the cultural plight of Filipino-Americans, leave that out of it. (I am waiting for the day a non-Neo Nazi comic starts off saying, “Bob Smith is a Caucasian-American police officer in New York City.”) This is a tiny little pet peeve of mine that I’ve spent enough time of this review of a solid comic on so...

Let me jump into the art section of the review by saying, “DAMMMN”. Now reclaim a bit of my professionalism (cough cough) I’ll explain why I think this is one of the most gorgeously drawn comics I’ve recently seen. It blends realism and traditional american comic art conventions perfectly. Angels are used well, anatomy is consistent and realistic, the outfits are imaginative (kind of gives me a bit of the “New 52” vibe- in a good way), and they don’t skip on the background. I can’t overstate how important that is, a lot of good comics have stunningly bad backgrounds (I’m looking at you Marvel and DC).

The dialogue is smartly written and have a very professional ring to it. A lot of indie comics have this tendency to overload us with exposition right off the bat and we’re smothered in dry lines by page 3 or 4. I got a LITTLE background (in snippets) during the first two pages. It didn’t require a block of text- I got it through dialogue and demonstration. I like that we get to see a lot of our protagonist's home life and get to really empathize with him as a person.

At first I didn't even notice the lettering, which to me makes me squee with joy. Lettering SHOULD be easy to read and not the main focus of the story. They do a bang up job of some very professional lettering and it pays off in a unicycle flowing comic.

One thing I’ll say detracts from this comic a bit of the subject matter. We have “supers” running around cities and a legal act that protects them and... yadda yadda yadda. Sorry to say but this is a really tired concept. We get it from the perspective of a mundane cop which is kind of unique but it feels like 1/2 the other indie comics in the superhero genre I’ve read. Off the top of my head, just the ones I’ve personally reviewed, I can think of: iHero, The Misadventures of Electrolyte and The Justice Purveyors, True North (somewhat), and Division M. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Division M (though much better written and executed) with that entry level cop vs superhuman sort of thing going on. It’s not to say this is a bad comic, it is just a song that has been played one too many times on the radio.

Overall this is solid comic. One of the most well rounded endeavors I’ve come across recently. It has a very human element in what could easily have descended into mediocrity. With a deft hand its crafted and bolstered by some solid artwork. Give it a read!

Metrics

Art: 8/10 (Pro level)

Lettering: 6/10 (As it should be)

Plot: 5/10 (Very human characters, good dialogue)

Novelty: 4/10 (Been done before)

Overall: 5.75/10

Review from: http://indiecomicreview.com/

For a comic where very little really happens, I found myself enjoying this very much. I think the very animation-ready artwork, colored wonderfully, has elevated this book from being just another desolate world/final hero going against impossible odds story...to give it an eye candy edge. It leaves plenty to be explored in subsequent issues, who are the marshals and syndicates, even other characters talked about but not seen. And it does this cleverly, doesn't try to cram in tons of back story which I've seen bog down some such stories. Instead, we're just left wondering. Here's my only question: with all I see going on at their website, what's the schedule on this? How is this not going to get lost in the mire of 500 other new books competing for people's attention? I'm going to do my part and give this a "Yes, check this out" recommendation. And I'll hope to see more. -Ian

If there's one thing I don't want to do after I die, it’s work. But according to the vision of the afterlife in “Brimstone and the Borderhounds,” that's exactly what I can look forward to. In the first issue we see what happens when a jerk of a guy dies and finds himself on the slow boat to Hell, where souls become part of a whole new workforce. Before he can even finish crying about what he's not supposed to be there, a breakout attempt ensues and the jerk makes a break for it with a bunch of other souls. Enter Brimstone and his gang of Borderhounds, a group of pseudo-bounty hunters that bring wayward souls back to Hell.

The main character of Brimstone is based on William Kucmierowski, better known by his professional wrestling name, Brimstone. He, along with fellow writer Marcello Carnevali and penciler Sajad Shah have created a version of hell that is part “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” part prime-time wrestling show, and part Zakk Wylde video. While the first issue doesn’t delve too deeply into Brimstone’s story, it does a nice job of setting up the world and laying the groundwork for the stories to come.

“Brimstone and the Borderhounds” #1 is a fun read that promises to get crazier with ensuring issues. I plan on sticking around to see to where this one goes.