3 out of 5

Includes previews of:

Dominique Laveua: Voodoo Child – Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, The New Deadwardians – Dan Abnett, Saucer Country – Paul Cornell, Fairest – Bill Willingham

Can’t rate the individual titles, that’s not fair.  Let’s instead rate the combination / choice of titles, plus how the little blurb before each represents the series and whether or not these previews serve the purpose of grabbing interest.

Voodoo Child: shit no.  The intro blurb is not written by our writer, instead by an editor (Karen Berger?), who must tell us that Selwyn is “former editor-in-chief of The Source magazine, award-winning author, journalist and TV producer.”  Maybe she’s contractually required to tell us this.  Maybe that’s just marketing training, as Selwyn has no recognizable books to tell us about, and has written no comics, so.. The Source?  But to my eye it only serves as b.s. masturbation, and a quote from Selywn that name drops “True Blood” and “Treme” for points of reference doesn’t help.  Now to the actual pages from the book, hm… Denys Cowan and John Floyd deliver a nice Klaus Janson jagged, loose style, but the voodoo bullshit is tired and the lack of anything grabbing character or storywise on these few pages is telling that Hinds hasn’t written a comic before.  Oh well.  Neither have I.

Deadwardians: I.N.J. Culbard gives us a very clean, almost robotic drawing style, which is nice for the Victorian-era look.  Abnett hasn’t won me over with anything yet, and the preview here is, in part, why – none of the characters or dialogue do anything for me except fill up the pages, but the idea seems fun, and I think if I were just a zombie dude (and some people are just zombie dudes), the look and preview here captures the feel of the book in such a way that I’d be willing to check out an issue.  But Abnett DOES write comics, so he gets that you gotta’ give a little to kepe us involved.

Saucer Country: Starts well, gets boring.  Ryan Kelly’s art is probably the most typical in the collection here, a dash of Brian Hurtt but with a tad more realism, but it could probably be applied to aliens pretty well.  Alas, we don’t get to see them in this little blurb, and I think someone would be more buying the book based on the summary page (Aliens… female president… save the world…!) than the actual included preview, which starts well (with aliens in shadows yaaayy) and then drops off into some boring political stuff that probably pays off in a full book but gets cut-off mid-sentence here.

Fairest: Phil Jimenez’s art can’t not look beautiful.  I got bored with Fables, and this short doesn’t re-stir my interest.  But Willingham has carved out a perfect niche for smart, funny fairy tales, and this preview pitches it and shows it well.  I think new readers who are truly unaware of Bill’s work can be grabbed by this, and the already converted will just salivate.

Boop.  Previews are tuff.  You did your best!  Maybe drop the sure bet next time (Fairest), since this was a freebie, after all, and give more room to the books that might need some more convincing.