Abandon Strip! Part Six

Where else can you get vampires, robbers and political commentary in the same place? In Gallows drummer Lee Barratt's comics blog, of course.

Posted Wednesday, 22 September 2010 by Lee Barratt in

Blog

Ahhh… vampires. They're pretty popular right now what with the success of Twilight, True Blood et al but they're not a new phenomenon in the world of comics. Having said that, they've never appeared in the X-Men universe so prominently before (to my knowledge.) So how does blending super-mutants and super-suckers fare?

Curse Of The Mutants: X-Men (Marvel) gets off to an explosive start as a vampiric suicide bomber blows up half of downtown San Francisco. The X-Men are alerted to the serious threat posed as their very own Jubilee is infected with the suicide bomber's contagious blood. As the issues unravel we find that the king of the blood suckers himself, Dracula, has been overthrown and disposed of by his son Xarus. The evil Xarus has a plan to unite all vampires and mutants and only the X-Men and a few of their friends can stop them. They plan to resurrect Dracula but what sort of consequences could that have as the unpredictable Vlad is bought back to life? There are a few one-shots released with the Curse Of The Mutants series that add extra depth to the story. Be sure to check out Storm & Gambit and Namor: The First Mutant #1 to find out how Dracula's body and severed head are retrieved.

COTM makes for an entertaining if not spectacular read so far with the first two issues being solid but issue three really upping the ante in terms of story development. I'm hoping writer Victor Gischler really comes through with the rest of this run. The art by Paco Medina is particularly good and I'm a big fan of his work on the regular Deadpool series too. If anything, it's worth commending Medina for his ability to make every female in the Marvel Universe look like Lolo Ferrari! I'm surprised Emma Frost & Storm don't have to take time off with back ache. Pick this up and you'll see what I mean.

If Curse Of The Mutants is grounded purely in fantasy then Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story (Vertigo) would be the polar opposite. Set mainly in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina hits in 2003, Dark Rain is a gritty and engrossing graphic novel about two ex-cons who propose to rob a bank situated right in the eye of the storm. As the desperate citizens of the city are trying to flee, Dabny Arcenaux and Emmit Jack are doing whatever they can to get in and make the most of the "second chance" they've been given.

Writer Mat Johnson weaves what is a fairly simple short story around interesting characters that you can warm to and some that you instantly despise. One of the repeating aspects of the novel to me seemed to be "don't judge a book by it's cover". In a time where people had to rely on other people, it was sometimes the ones you'd least suspect that would come through for you. Dark Rain does have a political theme as you would expect with the whole story being based around an event where the US government was heavily criticised for the delayed response to the flooding. On occasion, an overly political vibe can prove to be a distraction from the story being told but Johnson balances this with a clutch of sensitive and thought provoking subject matters that affect near enough all of the characters involved.

The excellent art by Brit Simon Gane is very attractive along with the fascinating colouring by Lee Loughridge. Dark Rain is mainly in black and white with gorgeous swathes of blue cutting through Gane's intricate but not messy pencils. The blue and gray contrasts add an extra layer of depth to a graphic novel that needs to be read whether you ever took an interest in New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina at all. At worst, it's a story about two guys trying to pull off a robbery but at best, it's a depiction of the struggles and life or death decisions that human decisions HAD to make when their worst fears were realised.



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