1 out of 5

Comic Writing 101?  Nah, we can skip that course.  On to the flashy stuff!  So I picked up Kings Watch because I read a blog that was all happy over Jeff Parker, claiming him to be of the more ‘classic’ school comic writing who seemed to grasp that these books can be fun, all the dramaturgy of Marvel and DC set aside.  Sounded good.  And though I’ve never been able to find something to justify it, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Phantom.  Something about a dude in purple spandex and striped shorts as a man’s man of an adventurer is just too odd to dismiss (insert mention of ‘any superhero who wears tights’ here).  AND I dig pulp influenced stuff when it’s done well.  So Kings Watch – Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and Flash Gordon teaming up to fight some world-threatening beastie, with a cool cover of tentacles reaching from beyond the frame while our heroes flex against an explosive background… all seemed to align for another pull list addition.

I accept that maybe I’m supposed to be reading some other Dynamite books to lead up to this crossover.  But I’m a seasoned comic reader, having jumped in to big events w/o knowing what’s what prior to cracking the cover, so I figured I could get up to speed… and certainly ‘Kings’ wouldn’t be aiming for ethereal, brain-twisting writing that would require more than some pictures and sound effects to get the story.  And I was right.  Page one is some lady having prophetic dreams, then glancing outside and there’s a big, scary lookin’ storm goin’ on (JUST LIKE IN HER DREAMS), and page the last has a panel of an unknown reading gobbledy-gook language from an ancient book… “The crystals will open the king’s watch…”

Ya ya, prophesy, bring our characters together.  Cool.  Let’s suppose that there’s a purposeful lack of apostrophe in the ‘Kings’ of the series’ title vs. that quote.

So my lack of interest in this book wasn’t in the basic gist.  It is what it is.  Nie, my problem was with the incompetence of stringing together more than one page that would build interest for a reader.  Even if I had been following things leading to here I think I’d be disappointed, since the contents don’t really accomplish anything.  ANYTHING.  But let’s touch on some things that bugged me on first readthrough, even when I wasn’t searching for them:

1st page is not one of our three featured players.  We get a little location blurb telling us she’s in New York.  Second page – location: Africa.  Here we see the storm as well, then the last panel – Phantom.  Okay, I see what we’re doing, intro to the cataclysm, then show our leads dealing with it.  Seems to follow to the next page – California, with Mandrake muttering to some demons about things, and there’s that storm again.  And now, certainly, on to Flas… oh, no.  Next page doesn’t have a location.  Appears to be some kind of cult, divining some knowledge about crystals and things that ties into that final quote.  And here’s a lady – a speaking role, so she’s important – who looks exactly fucking like the chick from page one, artist Marc Laming.  In fact, I was pretty certain it was her.  Now I’m pretty certain its not.  BUT I’M ACTUALLY NOT POSITIVE.  Grand.  Anyhow, this disruptive page then feeds into another location, Connecticut.  Three pages now, to introduce Flash Gordon (our flow has been completely fucked by this point), and here’s his dad… who… who looks exactly like Mandrake?  Are they the same person?  Eh, certainly not.  But maybe I thought they were at first.  Go ahead, flip the page back.  It’s the same fucking face and mustache.  Fuck you.  Oh, but Flash needs to be tied to the storm so real quick toss in a sloppy “The lights from space again!” panel with some squiggles in the background to indicate the storm.  Okay, back to our dialogue.  Now back to our lady from page one, who’s a journalist, filling in some exposition.  No location necessary for that.  But one is necessary for when we go to West Tanzania for a Phantom interlude where he shoots a lizard creature.  Why?  Because it’s a new location, I suppose, but it still just… just felt as random as the other choices made thus far.  The interlude panels are fairly cool, but its the longest portion of the book, doesn’t mention the storm at all, and thus feels like bullshit filler just to get some action in there.  (It is.)  Besides Laming’s similar lookin’ character problem, these pages also expose a lack of thinking out timing and space for his panels, Phantom flipping around the lizard and yes, panel by panel it looks pretty awesome, but when you stitch the movements together… it just doesn’t work.  This will sound pithy at this point, but… these issues aside, I dig Laming’s look.  It’s got the thickness of Epting, but he gets wonderfully loose and lush with some of his background elements, like J.P. Leon.  So the jungle looks very flush and alive, which is certainly a tough task to achieve on a static page.  This is all very much helped by colorist Jordan Boyd, who balances some dirty colors for rougher textures with a nice nigh-neon tint to the rest of the colors, and just the right touch of computer gradients.

Simon Bowland’s letters are also pretty awesome – nice and big but light, and he uses nice round bubbles with a lot of space that somehow don’t crowd the page.  I’d like to see his work elsewhere…

Anyhow, I just… didn’t… get it.  This issue failed for me, not offering enough anything to get me to do much but flip through a couple pages of issue 2 on the rack to verify its consistency with this one.  Yes, I tried a flipthrough of Batman ’66 as well.  So Jeff Parker will remain off my collector’s list for now.