2 out of 5

Hm.  Too much.  The second arc of Grindhouse goes for a women-in-prison exploitation mash-up but doesn’t find the same balance of issues 1 and 2 for its genre cherry-picking, resulting in two overstuffed issues that has a great concept but not enough room to sell it.  De Campi kicks things off with a ticklish four panel motif that calls to ‘man’s’ history with wanting to travel to the stars and beyond, the last panel offering the leading question, ‘Where could we find brave men willing to spend the rest of their lives traversing the cold vacuum of space… to leave behind bright futures on Earth for the tedium and danger of a cramped spaceship?’  The answer being women without bright futures – women in prison, introduced in a shower sequence with a chicky shoving her ass in the reader’s face.  It’s a great start.  Next we’re introduced to the warden, who, of course, is all sorts of crazy, disrobing, talking to the male clones that staff the ship (who address her as ‘Mistress’), unsheathing a samurai blade and asking for ‘the first sinner.’  Check and check.  From here things start to derail: over the next 15 pages, while we get the seed planted for the inevitable uprising (a girlfriend plucked from the masses for no reason other than to be punished as an example), de Campi also throws 20 elements at us that won’t get used again: an acid hose that washes away sin; the mistresses claims of sinlessness as demonstrated by her inability to be burned; a transgender newbie with ‘It’s Ma’am’ tattooed on her knuckles (an awesome explanation leading up to this but a throwaway detail nonetheless); some women gangs back-and-forths; the young Japanese girl’s prison story, which is 3 flashback pages unrelated to the point of focusing on her: so she can voice an escape plan.  This is all issue 1.  Issue 2 mostly focuses on this escape plan, which results in a nice women vs. clones battle but the payback against the Mistress is almost non-existent – it happens, but feels too little too late, since this all has to occur in these pre-defined 2-issue arcs – and the tale peters out at the end as a result of too much last minute bravado that has to suddenly switch off for some last panel jokes.  All of these pieces work, its just, as stated, too much.  Structure is totally necessary for comics – no one wants storylines that just meander – but I’ve also harped in other reviews on the dangers of setting too-rigid issue limitations.

Also not helping is our second artist, Simon Fraser, whose panels and characters are a distracting blend of detailing and non-detailing – fully sketched backgrounds that feel empty, distinct characters who never quite display the intended emotion.  It feels rushed, but not sloppy enough to match the Grindhouse vibe, and the colors in issue #1 (by Fraser and Victoria Lau) are too friendly for this business -the greens aren’t sickly and the reds and purples are pretty.  Gary Caldwell admittedly corrects this in issue #2 by not being so fancy, keeping the colors fairly level and not blended and real, giving it a much plainer look that sits better with the tone.

‘Bee Vixens’ might’ve had nods to sexploitation monster flicks, but you could read it as a newbie and enjoy the trashiness of it for what it was.  ‘Prisonship’ maintains the Grindhouse ethic, for sure, but feels more like Alex wanted to put every single piece of the genre in there, and it unfortunately overwhelms to the point of it being underwhelming.

Good backmatter again, though, and the pro of having such short arcs is you can totally justify picking up the rest of the series if it gets back to the standard of ‘Vixens.’