1 out of 5

Jesus, give me a break.  Look: I haven’t published anything.  I think it’s awesome that Image has been supporting a whole bunch of indie creators, and that things like Kickstarter enabled Barbiere to get this project off the ground.  And not everything is for me, obviously.  Some people are going to dig this.  Chris Mooneyham’s art is god damn gorgeous, a great sense of paneling, the overall blocking reminding me of the Sean Phillips world of foreground and background focus, but the pencils are pure Klaus Janson, man, and it’s nice to see that on some new material.  However S.M. Vidaurri ‘assisted’ with the colors also pays off, the blue/purple palette giving the book a pretty unique tone, like almost on the verge of pulp or horror but straying slightly into surreal.

But that’s all art, yeah?  I guess you can brush it off as, I dunno, pulp, or something, to just give us a blurb on the inside cover about our high concept (a dude possessed by five ‘literary’ spirits) and then go to town telling the story, but that’s also pure Mark Millar shite – thinking that a cool idea can get you by when the writing tanks.  What’s sad is that the intro to our lead character, using his five familiar faces (like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, etc.) to break into something something and steal something something else is fun – good action, good pacing.  Until you realize it’s not an intro, we just assume you get the point and are into the story, and look, here’s some other characters we won’t develop and now look both our undeveloped characters are off on a daring(!) mission that waitaminute why is it daring I have no fucking clue because who gives a shit if you don’t give me a reason to.

Get where I’m going with that?

But, again, the rapid fire, dime-store story is gonna do well for a lot of people.  Just not me.