How can the heed the call? None of them are carrying cellphones. Or have pockets.
Atom Jacket #1
James Alexander (July, 2018)
Anthologies today are a good way for creators to get discovered by audiences. Atom Jacket contains seven stories by indie creators. I’ll be curious to see what the shared theme is and what the name means. Let’s get started.
“The Traversers” (writer: James Alexander | artist: Joe Palmer)
A supervillain escapes his prison on Pluto and returns to the satellite headquarters of the superhero team The Traversers. Except the one guy there says they’re all dead of some really dumb reasons. Dejected, the villain leaves. I was ready to not like this story for making superheroes look bad, until the twist ending that injects the funny the writer was going for. That saved it, but that’s totally personal bias. Still didn’t get out of it what was intended, but I don’t hate it.
“Postpunks” by Michael Adam Kindred
A graffiti artist meets a biker punk upset about his graffiti…because the spray paint would be better for him to get high off of. One page and not a very interesting one. If this were the Golden Age comic reviews I would have ignored it.
“The Wandering Man” (writer: David Hailwood | artist: Chow)
Okay, I’m confused by this one. The narration says the guy killed himself because being a comic artist was boring, but Hell apparently has guns, furries, and the woman he “saves” turns out to be a vampire he also has to kill. At least, I think that’s what’s going on. At least the art is an improvement over the other stories. Kind of.
“Otherworld” (writer: Stu Perkins | artist: Chris Hunter)
So we get a tale of a knight on another planet dealing with all kinds of monsters…and then the last page is just him playing with action figures while someone tells him to get a job. Is this the pattern? Dumb twists?
“Scabs” (writer: James Alexander | artist: Ross Bampfylde)
Miners upset that genetic miners are breaking past their strike opt to attack the mutations…and destroy the asteroid they were mining. I’m glad this was free at the time I grabbed it or I’d be regretting this. No offense, guys, and I know most reviewers grade on curves for indie projects like this, but this is getting old now.
“Apocalypse: Now Or Never: (writer: Jimmy Furlong | artist: Andrew Hartmann | color: Bolt 01 | letterer: Val Ramon)
This is a reprint from Futurequake #23. So if you have that comic, you have this story. At least this doesn’t have a lame twist ending, though I could be wrong because partway through this “what if the space marines were all Elvis impersonators hunting down other impersonators” story got boring around the time of the Doctor Who cosplayers and the Freddy Mercury army. It lost be completely around the clowns, one of which used to impersonate Elvis’ manager until he went native. Yeah, didn’t like this one.
“Endgame” (writer: James Alexander | artist: Darren Stephens)
Well, we’re ending on a low note. New President presides over the destruction of secret documents like a self-portrait in crayon of George Bush (doesn’t say which one, but no “W” probably means daddy) or reports of a secret Soviet project to have leader cryogenically frozen in space in case they’re needed. President is assured we didn’t do anything that stupid. And then random alien because we still need a dumb twist.
overall
Two weeks ago I missed the Thursday post due to life. Last week I didn’t have time to read it for the same reason. This week I finally read it…and it really wasn’t worth reading. Not the worst thing I ever read but I’m clearly not the audience for this. As for the name…your guess is as good as mine.
BW Media Spotlight 