1 out of 5

My review are, by now, just recycled composites of things I’ve said before, so to stay consistent, here’s another one: that sometimes I get into a run where I feel like I’ve lost some my required critical subjectivity because everything I’m reading or viewing feels average.  And then I’ll have the good fortune to read something like Dead Vengeance that reminds me that there’s still some shit out there.  What’s especially hilarious – or depressing – about DV is how the elements of the first issue which I took to be self-aware camp – which we could expect from a Simpsons writer like Bill – turned out to just be bad writing.  Wow!  Also amusing is that I in part picked up the title because I dig on writer/artist books, and Mr. Morrison was the sole story/art credit on the first issue… and yet starting issue #2 we get a co-creator (Kayre Morrison – wife, perhaps miffed Bill didn’t fess up to her assistance on the book?) and pencils from Tone Rodriguez.  Bloop.

I mean, I also liked the setup of the first issue, with radio host John Dover using his show to out a crooked mayor during the Prohibition 30s, only to invite the ire of said mayor and his cronies… and then a blackout of ten years, after which John wakes up, naked, all zombie like, in a display as a ‘preserved corpse’ at a traveling carnival.  The writing has a hokey “guess I better get me some clothes and solve crime” tone to it as ‘John Doe’ tries to fill in the blank of the past decade, which the book seems like it might use as plot fodder leading up to whatever Vengeance this dead guy will take.  Hint the Second that things with the series will go awry: the front cover copy of the second issue essentially solves that mystery.  And the interior quickly destructs that quaint hokeyness to replace it with attempts at using pulp cliches to tell a gangster tale that fail because, firstly, they whitewash Doe’s character every few panels (his motivation for vengeance is questionable when his attentions are immediately diverted by a dame at the carnival…) and also because Bill apparently hasn’t read any comics in the past 50 years outside of Bongo, where writers have learned some techniques that don’t involve telling us the plot at every opportunity.  And also flashbacks that we dictate to ourselves.  Because that narratively makes sense.  And also constantly shuffling back to justify your reasoning for things, as though that first issue was written without any idea where it would go…

Tone Rodriguez’s art, while absolutely fine and workable, lacks character, which Bill’s Palmiotti / Gray-ish expressionistic style did, admittedly have.  So those remaining issues (2-4) art-wise don’t have much to distract you from the lame writing.  And maybe I’m missing the comedy here; maybe Morrison did want to make this a ‘bad’ comic – a B-movie in 4-color form.  Alas, claims to that are thwarted by where there are actual attempts at yuks.  So a fairly clear line seems to be drawn around the limits of the humor, and the rest of it is fair play to just call it a lame duck.

Doesn’t quite seem like one star?  Maybe the hokey dance still has appeal to you?  Sure, give it a chance.  For me, Morrison’s confusion over whether to pursue a mystery that he’s already solved or to turn this into a tongue-in-cheek pulp yarn when he can’t keep the motivations or personality of his characters consistent from one issue to the next is enough to sink it to the bottom rung.  But, yay: I’ve reaffirmed my subjectivity!