5 out of 5

One of the best god-damn examples of compressed story-telling I’ve ever read.  Maybe it sorta cheats because it’s two double-sized issues, but considering some 12-issue maxiseries can’t manage to tell tales as fun and entertaining as ‘Creatures,’ I’ll allow it.

So 4 college chicks hangin’ out in Paris who find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another have a shared dream of a burning man.  Then they’re attacked by blood-thirsty gnomes in bleeding hats.  In typical origin story form, each girl, in turn, discovers an odd power during the fight – a powerful scream, the power of flight, strength, trickery.  But instead of a spandex suit and cool name, along with each power comes a memory of an ancient battle of good and evil forces, and the realization that they’re cutesy college human shells contain the spirits of not-so-cutesy goblins and d’jinns and so on.  While some of this is pushed through at an accelerated pace, Wiebe doesn’t completely jump over any necessary beat – such as the ramp up to full-on acceptance – and he spreads out each girl’s discoveries to sensible waypoints in the story so that its not just overloaded with background exposition at any given point.  It might be the most straight-forward “comic” of what he’s written, but it doesn’t skimp at all on his awareness of scope that has made every one of his reads at least a notch above the norm.

The Red 5 printing and colors are quality, not the cartoon color brightness of Boom! but with a sort of artificial look to the pages, which actually is a great boon for Ash Jackson’s sketchy pencils, as it cleans up what could look messy in different formats.  Despite his looseness, Ash’s art is never not a perfect match for the book.  Action is clear and well directed, and the inks make the loose style that much more defined.  Every character has personality from the get-go and his gnomes and sorcerers and creepos somehow manage to look original even though every other comic has zombies in it nowadays.

Wiebe actually has another goblin-related book coming out.  I’m crossing my fingers it’s somehow related to this, because the story springs into a great setup for more, but

A. I know it’s not related and

B. This is probably one of those gems that remains gem-like due to its isolation.  The two issues are a full story, and pack the perfect amount of interest and excitement into those two pages.  So why push for more when what exists is already so good?