5 out of 5

Damn you, Brubsey.

Before we get into that: Velvet just looks spectacular.  The letters pages are full of this type of praise, but almost even more than the noir-soaked opening arc, I felt fully enveloped in the majesty of everyone bringing the visuals to life.  It could be after some recent close study of what I’m enjoying about Michael Lark’s work on Lazarus; it could be that this arc feels a bit more open and relaxed, compared to the tense ongoing chase of the first five issues (though there’s still much chasing going on…) and thus gives the team room to expand their palette.  Maybe they’re all just getting more and more used to the world.  Whatever the singular or mixed cause, Epting keeps delivering these staggering panels of complex acrobatic action or dramatic dialogue interactions; Velvet looks at “us” and you can feel her age and experience behind her look.  Other players have a similar effect, bringing their full personality to bear at any moment.  It’s stunning, while not so ink heavy as the forced darkness of Epting’s work on Brubaker’s Cap, or at least the inking is more streamlined, so it maintains a nice and light-on-its-feet comic / pulp vibe at the same time.  Elizabeth Breitweiser masterfully flip-flops between blotch water colors and more fine-tuned colors, adding to the sense of liveliness and flow on any given page.  Dave Stewart, another coloring bigwig, is generally awesome at choosing the right style / tone of coloring for the book, but Bettie (as Brubaker calls her) seems to be able to switch it up on the fly, whereas Dave tends to stick to a method for an issue.  Both approaches have value, of course, but it’s insane studying the colors and trying to imagine Breitweiser’s natural grasp of when a loose dab will do.  And also, just to be a jerk: Chris Eliopoulos.  I love when I hear a character’s voice and then go back and study the panels and realize how much of it is due to the letterer, knowing the ‘weight’ of balloons and letters, and making subtle changes for characters.  Chris has room to do that on Velvet, and it’s just another notch in the characterization belt that’s totes snug around this series thus far.

Now back to damning Brubaker.  I’ve commented elsewhere that I’ve somewhat fallen out of favor with his writing over the years, as the early writing I adored feels a bit too simple in retrospect, and his recent crime runs with Sean Phillips are conceptually awesome but have become too mean-spirited or style-over-substance for my tastes.  So it was nice being able to spare my wallet from being addicted to a writer.  But with Velvet – and The Fall Out, though that still may plummet into style any moment – this is essentially what I imagined I was reading when I first got into Ed; what I wanted his Marvel stuff to feel like, this high action pulp but with an undercurrent of grit.  It’s hard to do that at the major publishers, so no blame for Ed’s getting too wrapped up in Comicy stuff there, as that is the market, but I wasn’t finding it in Criminal, Fatale, etc., so… yeah.  It’s in Velvet in spades.  Image would allow Ed the sex and swearing if he wanted it (and he does use it), but it seems he’s intent on actually writing a different spin on his style here, and I’m madly in love with it thus far.  It’s cool and complex and stocked with so many awesome bits and pieces.  And he hasn’t over-used his POV switching yet, boiling it down to one split issue in this arc that covers two of the team tracking Velvet.

In ‘Dead Men,’ we get a bit more plotting and less running, culminating in an awesome train sequence.

So it looks like I’ll still have to keep my eyes on Ed, and still will definitely be keeping my eyes on this series, crossing my fingers that it maintains the adult but light-hearted tone.