Image Advance Arrivals: December 2024
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
The Holy Roller
Professional bowler Levi Cohen is forced to stop being one in order to care for his ailing father back in his hometown. Problem is that when he gets there, Levi finds out that it’s been overrun by neo-nazis. What’s a former pro bowler to do in this kind of situation? Why, use his collection of trick bowling balls and go fight the bad guys as the vigilante known as the Holy Roller!
While artist Roland Boschi has done enough oddball stuff at Marvel and Image to show me that he’s up for delivering on the silly premise of this series, I’m more interested in seeing what we get from the writers here. Rick Remender is the biggest comics name attached to it, but he’s also co-writing this with actor/comedian/fake rapper Andy Samberg, and the lead guitarist of Fall Out Boy Joe Trohman. Either this is a true group effort that will have a different style to it than what we’d expect from Remender, or Samberg and Trohman have just scrawled a bunch of notes on cocktail napkins that the comics writer glanced at while writing this. Whatever the case is, I just hope the end result isn’t boring.
Meanwhile, Christmas is in the air in these solicitations, and you know what that means…
Creepshow 2024 Holiday Special, Dread the Halls, Top Cow Holiday Special: We’ve got a few one-shots to ring in the season. Two of them are explicitly horror-themed, and I’m willing to bet that the Top Cow one is at least horror-adjacent, so there’s some consistent theming here. As for the talent involved, there’s no one here to convince me that one of these is really worth picking up. Though, longtime fans (I mean, are there really any other kind these days) of Witchblade, The Darkness, and Aphrodite IX will likely want to check out the Top Cow special.
Freddie the Fix: Not a Christmas special, but a horror-themed one-shot from writer Garth Ennis and artist Mike Perkins. This is the inaugural release from Ninth Circle which bills itself as a “creator-owned, creator-driven, horror showcase of standalone bone-chilling tales of terror and mayhem.” That said, the description of this issue doesn’t sound like it fits that bill as the title character is billed as a fixer of problems for supernatural creatures. The solicitation text bills it as “The Boys” meets “Ray Donovan,” though I’d think that the latter by way of “Hellblazer” would also describe what they’re going for here. This is a magazine-sized one-shot, and while it doesn’t sound bad, its nature means that it’ll likely be unread by me until it gets collected down the line.
Juvenile #1 (of 5): This is billed as a miniseries from visionary filmmaker Jesus Orellana that bridges the gap between film and comics. In the sense that some movie trailers give away way too much of a movie’s plot, then that’s absolutely true based on the solicitation text here. Initially this is described as a riff on “Logan’s Run” where a virus kills everyone upon reaching adulthood, teenagers are confined to massive medical facilities for treatment. That is, until a new arrival tells her fellow inmates the shocking truth: The virus isn’t killing them, it’s giving them telekinetic powers that the adults are desperately trying to contain. Cue the plans for escape, rebellion, and the fate of the human race.
I get the feeling that not just the first issue, but the whole thrust of the entire miniseries has been spoiled here. Not a great start. Neither is billing yourself as a visionary filmmaker when IMDB has your only credit as one short from over a decade ago.
The One Hand & The Six Fingers: This collects two separate-but-related miniseries with an interesting storytelling device that connects them. In “The One Hand,” by writer Dan Watters and artist Laurence Campbell which has the familiar setup of a grizzled homicide detective facing down retirement, until a murder is committed with all the same hallmarks of a killer he put away (twice!) years ago. “The Six Fingers” on the other hand *rimshot* has writer Ram V and artist Sumit Kumar telling the story of archaeology student Johannes Vale who has lived a good life up until the point he commits a murder using the modus operandi of a famous serial killer. At least, that’s what he thinks has happened as he doesn’t have any memory of doing it.
This edition collects both miniseries in one volume in alternating chapters to show how they fit together. I really like the idea behind these miniseries, but the reason it’s not getting the Above-the-Board recommendation is because neither writer is someone I consider a must-read. The Marvel and DC work I’ve read from V has been so-so, though I did like his and Filipe Andrede’s “The Many Deaths of Laila Starr.” As for Watters… I don’t think I’ve read enough (or even any) of his stuff to have a proper opinion on him. Hm, I guess that’s as good a reason to pick this collection up in addition to seeing if the way these stories are being told turns out to be as clever in practice as it looks on paper.