Quantcast
Channel: Weekly Comic Book Review » James Lowder
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 8

Hack/Slash #12 – Review

0
0

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Daniel Leister (art), Carlos Badilla (colors), Crank! (letters) and James Lowder (edits)

The Story: The Hack/Slash crew goes to South America, searching for a cure to the disease that causes slashers.

Four Things:

1. Funny. – This is a comic for people who like jokes about bodily functions.  If you roll your eyes at that kind of humor, I’m not sure that Hack/Slash is the book for you.  But if you’re one of “us”, there are some great moments in this comic.  The humor is in small places and a lot of it comes from timing, which is a hard thing to have in a comic.  For example, at one point, after landing on this monster island, Cassie goes into the bushes to go to the bathroom and gets attacked by water zombies.  Since they’ve been in the water, they’re soft and they pop when she hits them.  Soon she is covered in green blood and guts.  When she comes back to the group, one of the others says, “Whoa! You really had to go!”  I mean….that’s funny.  Then I giggled again when I realized that the name of the motion picture studio that shoots films on monster island is “Monster Bait” studios.  Heh.

2. Whacky ideas all over the place. – Not only is it a funny comic, but it’s kind of an idea-a-minute issue.  There’s the nature of the monster island and how it relates to those awful 50’s era monster films.  There are attacks by about 10 different types of weird monsters.  There’s a possible link to Nazi science.  I dunno why the mysteries of Nazi science are still so fascinating, but they are.  There’s also a possible link to the slasher disease.  It’s all good stuff.

3. New colorist? – One area where I’ve been critical of Hack/Slash has been the coloring and we get a new guy for this issue.  The coloring is still highlighted, but it is less shiny than it used to be.  Big improvement!  I’ll still say that I think the comic would POP if you tossed some flat colors onto it.  My specific complaint is with this type of soft highlighting is that it makes rock hard characters look softer than they should.  For example, Cassie is probably pretty defined since she gets lots of exercise smashing monsters AND she doesn’t eat much (because they’re always so poor).  Her arms/back/legs wouldn’t have the softness of a plus-sized model yet that’s what we get with soft highlights.  Still, this is a huge step in the right direction.  I even like the color palate better.

4. Pretty good art. – Sometimes I take sequential storytelling for granted just because it’s usually pretty good in the average Marvel comic.  Not that Marvel = Great Art, but they do tend to snap up a lot of top talent because they pay cash upfront.  But, I read a lot of non-Marvel/DC comics that have some screwed up storytelling, especially during fights.  Leister’s fights are always crystal clear.  You can see precisely what happened and I thank him for that!  Otherwise the art is pretty good and I also applaud him for keeping the ladies sexy.  This won’t win any Eisner’s but the line-art is holding up its end of the bargain.

Conclusion: Another solid issue of Hack/Slash.  If you’re an adventuresome reader who has an affinity for old horror movies and bodily function jokes, this is a series you shouldn’t be missing.  This issue is even is decent jumping on point.

Grade: B

-Dean Stell

Follow Dean on Twitter.

Follow WCBR on Twitter and Facebook.


Filed under: Image Comics Tagged: Carlos Badilla, Crank, Daniel Leister, Dean Stell, Hack/Slash, Hack/Slash #12, Hack/Slash #12 review, Image, James Lowder, review, Tim Seeley

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 8

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images