Sticking with original ideas and concepts

The Twilight Experiment tpb
DC Comics
Creators: Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Juan Santacruz, Jose Luis Roger, Carrie Strachan and Phil Balsman
Release date: 2005

I got this book from a seller on eBay almost three years ago. When I buy out-of-continuity books like this one, especially trades, they often get tossed on a stack to be read when I have a chance. I didn't know anything about this title going in, so I imagine I purchased it because of the writers, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.

I don't always like comics written by this frequent writing duo when they tackle established characters. I guess sometimes their idea of what company-owned characters like the Teen Titans members would do or how they'd act in given situations don't always line up with mine. But I have liked a lot of stories this pair has written using their own, original characters. Don't believe me? Check out these previous posts on Hype, Book Smart and Time Bomb, all penned by Palmiotti and Gray.

This collected six-issue miniseries is no exception. It was printed by DC Comics, but takes place in its own universe, not the DCU proper. In this world, there were only a handful of super-powered beings, and when they all destroyed each other, they took a good chunk of Denver, Colo., with them. This story focuses on Rene Doyle, a troubled paramedic who lost most of her family in the Denver battle when she was just a child, and Michael, the super-powered son of one of the heroes who gave her life trying to stop the violence that day. The two meet by chance, but soon find out that not only do they have a lot in common, they may be the world's only hope of preventing another, even greater tragedy.

Another great story by a simply terrific writing duo — at least when they are writing their own, original characters. And there's nothing wrong with that!

You Win Some; You Lose Some

Headache/Endangered
Kickstart Comics
Lisa Joy/Josh Williamson, writers
Jim Fern/Juan Santacruz, artists

Kickstart has given me two really good reads so far. These two sounded like they might continue that trend, but as it turns out, not so much.

Let me reiterate my belief about comics I don't care for: That doesn't mean they are bad comics. Not every comic appeals to every reader, and just because I didn't care for one doesn't automatically make it a bad one, just not for me. For instance, the first of these two books, Headache, actually has a number of endorsement quotes on both the front and back covers. Someone likes it. Just not me.

Headache refers to Sarah Pallas, an 18-year-old resident at an asylum. She doesn't suffer from headaches, and she doesn't consider herself a headache. That's how her extended family, especially her father and his wife, think of Sarah. The young girl is in the asylum because she has memories of being someone else, the goddess Athena. Her stepmother, Hera, wants to destroy her because Sarah is a constant reminder of Zeus' infidelity. And Zeus just wants to destroy all of mankind.

Obviously, this book is filled with gods and goddesses living in secret among normal humans. Sounds interesting enough so far, but almost all of the characters in this book are extremely one-dimensional. They all come across as so bored by humanity and their existence among humans, why bother to expend the effort even to destroy the human race, as many of them want to do. And Sarah/Athena, being half-human, wants to halt their plans but is pretty ineffective about doing anything. When she succeeds, it is almost more a case of the other gods thwarting themselves. The artwork on this one is nice, but not enough to save the book in my eyes.

The second book, Endangered, seemed even more up my alley. Chris and Mikey are two teens a little embarrassed by their safety specialist father until they learn he is secretly a member of an intergalactic police force and somewhat of a hero at it to boot. Chris and Mike learn the truth about their father when he doesn't come home from a business trip. Instead, a young alien girl shows up at their home saying that their father sacrificed himself to free her from the clutches of a threat to all life in the cosmos.

This one isn't really a bad story, it just didn't grab my attention as much as I expected from the description. Again, the art here is nice and helps compliment the storytelling, it just isn't enough to save the book by itself.

The Gamble Pays Off A Second Time

Book Smart
Kickstart Comics
Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, writers
Juan Santacruz, artist

My first exposure to Kickstart Comics was with The Book of Lilah. I enjoyed that stand-alone, digest-sized graphic novel so much, I wanted to try some of the company's other offerings. And that has paid off nicely with this book, another stand-alone, digest-sized tome.

I'm already familiar with the writers of Book Smart; the writing team of Palmiotti and Gray is not a sure-thing for my tastes, but when I like a tale they've created, I tend to REALLY like it. And their writing is usually solid, no matter how much interest I end up having in the finished product.

For as much as I enjoyed this book, though, I was unsure about it until about halfway through. It starts off with a young woman in the Himalayas with two native guides. They stumble across a hidden temple, and the two natives attack and rob the young woman, stealing her possessions and leaving her to die in the cold. She doesn't die, however, instead wandering until she is found by a mountain villager who takes her to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. When she wakes up after three days, the young woman does not know who she is or how she came to be in Nepal. Her doctor offers some suggestions for trying to piece together who she is and sends her out into the foreign city where she is immediately attacked by more thugs. Only, this time, she sees the attack coming and single-handedly fights off all of the attackers.

At this point, the book was seeming a little clichéd to me. I already knew the basics of the plot from the description before I bought the book: She's likely a spy or other covert agent, and while she doesn't remember who she is, she can fight quite well. Adding to my dislike were the series' art miscues. The woman on the cover of the book is standing in a typical spy pose, complete with high-tech pistol and is very obviously a dark-haired woman. But the heroine of the story has no gun, doesn't even bother to pick up a gun from one of her dispatched assailants and has brownish, sometimes almost dark blonde hair. It would still be a bad continuity error to confuse the color of the heroine's hair between the cover and interior if there were different artists involved, but when the same artist and colorist work on both the cover and interior, such an error is just sloppy.

The young woman tracks down the hotel she was staying at and learns she checked in under the name Samantha Rayne. Along the way, she picks up a few allies and several more factions wishing her harm. And then, about two-thirds of the way through the book, Palmiotti and Gray throw a twist into the action that not only takes the story in a unique and unexpected direction, but one that makes all previous complaints I had fade away. With one small plot twist, they managed to catch me off-guard, explain the significance of the book's title, renew my faith in the ability of the artists and capture my interest completely. Kudos all around, gentlemen; well done!