Local Man vol. 2: The Dry Season
Jack Xaver, formerly the superhero known as Crossjack, may still be hated by his fellow townspeople, but he’s marginally less hated by its sheriff after what they went through with Camo Crusader in the previous volume. Which is why he’s asking Jack to look into the death of a high school girl whose autopsy says that she drowned on dry land. Our protagonist is more than willing to do so as part of his self-rehabilitation plan, and because the girl was part of Inga’s Future Forum. Inga is, if you’ll recall, the sheriff’s wife, Jack’s former girlfriend before he left, and current side piece for reasons known only to her. They might, however, have something to do with the secret superhero storage facility she’s managing on the outskirts of town.
Before any of that can be dealt with, Jack’s going to have to deal with some time-travel nonsense that involves his younger self, and a bunch of Image Comics B-and-C-listers showing up in town. They were in the middle of a big galactic confrontation and need to get back to it and their only means of doing so is finding… Joan Peterson, the protagonist of “Love Everlasting?” No, really, it is and it’s actually pretty clever how co-writers and artists Tony Fleecs and Tim Seely work her into the story.
The rest of the “Local Man: Gold” one-shot is an experience in showcasing how deep Jack’s self-loathing goes. He didn’t like his old self much to begin with and winds up getting a firsthand reminder of that here. While I could appreciate the intensity of the emotions on display, the story didn’t tell me anything about the character that wasn’t made clear in the previous volume. So your enjoyment of this will likely hinge on how entertaining you find all of the superhero cameos to be, along with their placement in a relatively grounded setting. None of them are terrible, but outside of Joan I would’ve traded them all for a team-up with Poyo.
As for the main story in this volume, I certainly appreciate Jack’s efforts to try and be a better person. He’s doing a terrible job of it, which may actually be intentional on the part of Fleecs and Seely. Which means that if you weren’t into how relentlessly they stuck it to their protagonist in vol. 1 then you’re not going to find a lot to appreciate here. Me? I wasn’t that impressed either, but vol. 2 imparted some morbid fascination on my part in seeing just how bad things are going to get for Jack. It’s probably enough to sustain my interest through another volume, but not much more than that if it doesn’t look like they’re going to wrap things up then.