Thief of Thieves vol. 2: Help Me

I didn’t expect the first volume of this series to grow on me as much as it did while I was reading it.  The end result was that I wound up looking forward to reading the next volume more than I thought I would.  Creator/co-writer Robert Kirkman and artist Shawn Martinbrough are still onboard, but they’re joined by James Asmus for this arc.  He’s a writer who I’m not that familiar with, even though I know he did the last arc of “Generation Hope” and is currently writing “Gambit” for Marvel.  While I don’t want to put everything in this volume that rubbed me the wrong way down to him, the fact remains that it isn’t as entertaining as the first.

When we last left master thief Conrad Paulsen, he had managed to put one over on his FBI nemesis Elizabeth Cohen, and spring his ne’er do well son Augustus from federal custody.  Though that should’ve meant a happy ending for everyone involved, the problem is that the cartel who hired Augustus to move the drugs he got busted for now wants a return on their investment.  Unfortunately for him, Augustus doesn’t realize they mean business until the cartel kidnaps his girlfriend Emma in an effort to get the son to convince his dad to work for them.  Of course this calls for a caper to get the girl back, but neither Conrad nor Augustus realize that Emma has a big secret of her own that could put them both away.

It’s a good setup and there’s enough snap to the execution that the book still reads pretty well in spite of everything.  Conrad remains a compelling lead character as we find out early on that he’s having too much fun as a thief to really give it up.  Even though he’s the best there is at what he does, the fact remains that even he’s not good enough to make all the bad things go away and it’s interesting to see this play out over the course of the volume.  There’s also lots of thiefly scheming and planning (but less than we were treated to before) on display here.  That stuff’s always fun to see in action, whether it’s big — Conrad and Augustus’ plan to break into the cartel’s hotel — or small — their improvised plan to break out when things inevitably go wrong.

Martinbrough is also on fine form here with his art.  This is a series with lots of talking heads and the man handles all of the necessary “acting” required for their emoting to be believable quite well.  He makes the action flow smoothly so that the reader’s immersion is never broken due to any fault on his part.

So what’s the problem?  Primarily it’s Augustus, who comes off as a singularly unsympathetic presence here.  While we found out in the first volume that even though he’s a thief like his father, he has none of that man’s skills.  That wasn’t too much of a problem there because he was in the background most of the time.  Here, though, he’s the driving force of the narrative and his lack of skills, arrogance, and refusal to learn even the smallest thing from his mistakes does nothing to endear him to the reader.  It’s established early on that Augustus was fascinated by his dad’s line of work at a young age and wants to be just like him, but that only buys him a little sympathy.  We’re shown that he’s utterly inept as a thief and has pretty much done nothing but screw things up for those around him, including his dad, ever since he set down this path.  There’s self-destructive, and then there’s just plain dumb.  Augustus is too much of the latter.

The other issue here is that the tone skews a little too dark for its own good here.  In the first volume we were treated to a detailed caper that happened to be a lot of fun to see unfold and the violence was kept to a minimum.  Here, with the involvement of the cartel, the violence is ratcheted up and things become more grim and less fun to read about as a result.  I can see that Kirkman and Asmus were trying to increase the suspense and drama accordingly here, but it feels like this change has come too soon in the title’s run to be really effective.  Had they run with the tone of the first volume a bit more, it would’ve been appropriately shocking when people started getting beaten up, threatened with their lives, and — in a particularly gruesome scene — stabbed to death with a machete.  As it is, this feels like the writers are casting about for a tone that works rather than following through on any particular plan.

Even with these issues, I’m not about to give up on the title yet.  After all, I said earlier that it was still quite readable in spite of everything and we’re getting a new co-writer with the next arc:  Andy Diggle.  If the man who wrote “The Losers” can’t turn things around and deliver a caper that’s on par — or even better than — the first arc, then I’ll start being worried.  As for anyone who wants to wait on picking up this volume to see if that happens; well, that’s fine too.