4 out of 5

I guess Image’s Next Issue Project isn’t so different from something like Dark Horse’s Eerie / Creepy relaunches, but it really has a unique feel to it, and when the writers / artists hit the proper note, it’s a pretty awesome feeling.  Not to mention the overall look of the books, which don’t really belie their true nature except in the short Erik Larsen editorial up front.  But of the issues published thus far (3 as of this writing), only the most recent really seems true to its theme from start to finish, whereas issues 1 and 2 ruin the spell here and there with writers who just don’t “get it” (which is ridiculous for me to say, since I’m not the one who created the series) or artists whose styles seem fitting but all in all are poor matches.

The pitch is that each issue is the Next Issue of a series which has fallen into the public domain, so stuff from the Golden Era, 30s to 50s, and in order to allow several people to get their hands dirty, it looks like orchestrator Larsen has been sticking to anthology books, and is also smart enough to not stick strictly to – “and here’s what happened next…” but rather allow for a cherry-picking of the most suitable characters from a book’s run and giving modern writers and artists a crack.  However, it’s not meant to be a reboot by any means, but rather a moderately faithful follow-up.  This doesn’t prevent a bit of a smile here and there with how cheeky things are, but when the stories find the right balance, that cheekiness is perfectly in line for the sort of black and white style that existed back in those days.  When the authors push it too much toward parody, it feels like we’re poking fun instead of preserving and appreciating, and when – as in the case of Mike Gilbert’s entry – the spin is to totally modernize the story – it works in a similar fashion of seemingly redirecting the purpose.  Then there are people like Ashley Wood who seem to entirely miss what’s going on.  Interestingly, some who would seem to be a perfect fit for the concept – Mike Allred – are too set in their ways to blend in with the color palette and purposeful dating of style that the other authors and artists use.  He attempts to get it right by fading his colors, but his look (and wife Laura’s inks) are just too sharp and defined to seem appropriate, and the colors way too flashy to match the 4-color (or whatever) selection available to those pulpy mags of yore.

But these missteps aside, Erik Larsen perfectly sets the trend at the beginning of each issue with some fantastically wacky adventure stories, loosening up his dramatic pencils just enough to look like the work of the somewhat untrained hand / eye of Golden Age artists.  And as mentioned, the book – in magazine size – includes assumedly accurate ads from the era from cover to cover, even the copyright mentioning the original comic book name and the book numbered in sequence to act as a true “Next Issue.”  If not for a price tag printed on the cover over the original price stating “Next Issue Project” and that previously mentioned blurb from Larsen blended in with the inside cover ad, we’d buy this as a reprint of a lost book.

It really is an awesomely fun project, ditching the modernization route of, say, Dynamite or the obvious “it’s new and old” Dark Horse approach with its new horror lines for this really cool blend of modern artists / writers trying to mostly convince us that this book could’ve appeared way back when.  It looks great, appears on thick, gorgeous paper stock, and mixes so many genres that its a blast to read, either as a notalgia piece (if you’re actually familiar with any of these books) or just as a cheeky good time.  In issue 3, Larsen asks for the support to continue… because they’re fun books to make.  Well, I can only hope there are plenty of people who are digging on this like me, because I’d love to see these things released and released for a fair amount of time.