One Coin Reads 25: Magnus, by Kyle Higgins and Jorge Fornés

Magnus, by Kyle Higgins and Jorge Fornés

2018

I can now say I've read a Dynamite comic.

That's a neat cover

Dynamite is a company that I know because of Zorro and Green Hornet comics, which was enough to avoid them up to now. I read comics, not property delivery vehicles. After I read this, I realized this was a property of sorts: This is a variation on the Gold Key character Magnus Robot Fighter that was revived in the 90s under Valiant. But this isn't the Magnus character, just the name attached to a new character that does stuff with robots. The book itself doesn't explain what it is either, I gathered that from ads in the back for the actual Magnus Robot Fighter. I get that I'm an outlier in comics: more folks will sample a character they've heard of than avoid a revived IP because it's just a husk that publishers think they can make a buck off of.

There's a metaphor to be had about corporate IP exploiters and the slave class of AI in this book

With this book, I bought it for its sweet clearance price of ¥441, and it was written by Kyle Higgins whose Dead Hand Image book I enjoyed. With this book, I'm confident to say: Higgins is a good writer.

I've only read the two books now, but both books had some things in common: they doled out information at a solid pace, they had a firm sense of the world they were in, and created ethical questions for the characters. And they told a complete story!  There is Philip K Dick heart to both, where the artificial life in the books have human qualities, and the humans in the book have substantial difficulties empathizing with them. I don't think he's a next-level must buy writer, but the books are reliable page-turners with interesting ideas. So I know his name and will give his books a second look if they cross my path and they aren't Nightwing.

A textbook example of dishing out world-building info without feeling like an info-dump

The book revolves around a murder on a future world where AI robots are a slave class. It navigates the world-building with the story nicely by having a protagonist that is at the center of this whole concept. Magnus as envisioned in this book is a woman with a special ability to live in the virtual space called the Cloud where AI spend their free time. 

AI in the Cloud can appear any way they like, this character lives in shadow 

The setting is complicated: AI were used as tools in this society, but achieved sentience. To make their slave class acceptable, they were given the Cloud to live their time off in. But they still aren't respected as equal to humans in the real world, and tensions are rising. The Cloud drives human minds mad, with Magnus one of the only humans capable of extended periods of time there, and she has become not a robot fighter, but a robot therapist.

Fornés art shifts in styles. Sometimes he channels Mike Allred

Once you have that established, things move at a brisk pace, as Magnus navigates both AI and humans. Neither side is going to see eye to eye soon, but the question becomes one of whether they'll try to meet in the middle or simply go to war. 

Fornés has some Steve Lieber, Dave Aja or similarly rough artists style too. It all looks good, but it's not all aesthetically consistent

I'd be lying if it didn't seem a lot like the racial tensions America can't escape from. We see the humans versus the AI, with most humans barely even able to admit there might be a problem despite every AI being frustrated. It echoes so much of what minorities in America have been expressing: not just a difficulty in addressing the problem, but even in getting mainstream America to admit it there is a problem. What's great about this is that the book isn't writing anything with a direct one to one parallel (a la "Have you tried not being a mutant?"), but just borrowing nuances from the frustration that occurs on all sides. The story tapped into the ethical problems that will occur if AI ever develops anything resembling a will.

People wouldn't really rally to hate on an underclass, would they?

Jorge Fornés has really solid art throughout the book, though it's not stylistically consistent. It didn't throw me off too much though. His storytelling is really good. Pages have a good movement from panel to panel, and characters are instantly recognizable. Like Higgins, he does incredibly solid, if not astounding work.

This two page spread is the most interesting of the book, as the action moves upward on the left page, and downward on the right. I can imagine Fornés was pretty pleased when he conceived of and completed this

I don't mean to sound critical. It's hard to make a good comic. This is a very good comic. We're inundated with sci fi comics these days, so it's getting harder and harder to map out your own space. This book is inventive, well-constructed, and enjoyable. It's also modest. It tells a complete story, but where I would be happy to see a sequel. It's not laying the groundwork for five years of comics they hope you buy. Sometimes I just want to read a good book. This was good.

Looks like he drew it, instead of copy-pasted. Nice!

One Coin Reads 6: The Dead Hand, by Kyle Higgins and Stephen Mooney

The Dead Hand, by Kyle Higgins and Stephen Mooney

2019

Continuing my dive into steeply marked down trades on comics, I picked up The Dead Hand for ¥458. The cover looked like something I'd like. It has some of the vibes from Steve Epting back on the Winter Soldier era Captain America and I enjoy some Cold War genre work.

It's a nice cover. In retrospect, it doesn't really communicate any of the book plot 

My usual complaints for Image books are that nothing much happens in the first trade until the last couple pages, and the art is Paul Pope Lite, so going in, that's the stereotype I want to get past. I'm happy to say this book is nothing like that. I had some issues with the book overall, but there is more to praise with this than criticize.

The strongest point is the writing and pacing. I have heard Higgins name before, but I don't know him and this is the first time reading any of his work. The Dead Hand collects issues one to six of a series, and Higgins does his best to have a hook drop on the last page of each issue, emphasizing it by making it a splash page. If I'm reading genre work like this, I want this pulpy ratcheting up of the story each issue. This book has pacing very much in line with The Walking Dead in that way. 

Most of the characters are introduced through collage spreads or splashes. It's not story-telling, but it tells a story

It's difficult to discuss the book without spoiling the story, but I'll spoil the first issue of the book for discussion's sake since it's the setting of the rest of the book. We're introduced to an American ex-military ops guy working as a cop in a small town. Some unusual stuff goes down and the first issue ends with the reveal that the town is in Siberia. It's an intriguing set up, and the first half of the book aims to set up situations for later in the book to resolve. If that sounds interesting, you'll probably enjoy the book. As the I got toward the end of the book and fewer and fewer pages were left, I started to get this feeling that the book would be leaving off on a cliffhanger for the next trade. When I finally got to the end, I was very pleasantly surprised:

The story ended. It was an open ending that could be continued, but it ended. It was such a nice feeling. The book has a "1" in the sub-title, and a "1" on the spine, so I was expecting there would be an issue seven out in the wild, but this is self-contained. I'm guessing the intent is to continue if it sold gangbusters, but make it its own story. That's great. 

That said, it wrapped up much more abruptly than was satisfying. The pace leading up to the sixth issue was spaced out, decompressed storytelling. The final issue crams the resolution together and yada yadas itself to the end. If I were the editor, I probably would have wanted issue six to be double sized or compress the opening of the book to make space in the last two issues for the conclusion. Overall, the writing was well-done though; it was solid genre writing with a solid premise.

Jordie Bellaire on colors makes things better

The art is really hit and miss for me. Some of it is good, Mooney does grounded spy action pretty well. The thing is, it's not consistent. Sometimes, he is drawing freely, and there is artistic looseness. Other times though, he's so reliant on photographs that the work moves into Greg Land photo-collage territory. Characters don't interact with the backgrounds much less each other. I liked the loose work better.

Mooney has an ambition to do realistic art, and maybe he's going to get there in a satisfying way, but he's not quite there on this project. The art ranges from solid to janky. I like Michael Lark's work so much, but nobody starts their comics career making work like that. That seems to be where Mooney is headed, and power to him if and when he does it.

Things that rubbed me wrong in this pic: her pose, the cop's elbow, the family photo to establish family relations shows the daughter at her current age rather than something showing family history, no curtains or blinds, the table and the floor... that's nit-picky, but it's not immersive and in a less "real" image, these problems would disappear

There's some of the Photoshop image duplication as well. Lots of folks have come to terms with this as a creative comics technique in the 21st century, but it's never going to be anything other than irritating in a book to me. Just get a light box and trace your own work.

Did Higgins tell Mooney to use the same face four times? Is that the artist's choice?

This is a genre product, and it was successful at what it was trying to do. I'll check another Kyle Higgins book in the future if the price is right. Mooney isn't to my tastes. 

It was a real treat to get an Image trade that wasn't the first part of an epic you'll never finish reading.