Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Comic(s) du jour: City of Dust #1-3 (Oct.-Dec. 2008)

Writer Steve Niles throws a pretty good twist into this five-issue series from Radical Comics. This starts off following the footsteps of Ray Bradbury's classic "Fahrenheit 451," introducing future copper Philip Khrome patrolling a future in which stories, religion and books are all banned. Khrome's a dutiful cop, doing his duty by the book. But the twist — the twist! — comes out of left field (at the end of the second issue, no less) and really makes you sit up and notice. Perhaps given Niles' track record as the creator of "30 Days of Night" (the comic rocks, even though the movie definitely does not), it shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.

The art on the first two issues of this are by the mono-named Zid, with Brandon Chng and a few others chipping in. It follows the Radical style, which is rapidly becoming a house style. It's a generally attractive, fully painted look that is dark and moody and looks in some way heavily processed. It reminds me of the look of the film "Beowulf," which was dank and murky. That film also had detail, which is something that some more traditional comic line art could add.

I don't know how much life this has beyond this initial five issues, but for now it's a nice injection of coolness into the comic scene.

2 comments:

Paul DeBenedetto said...

I've never read anything by Radical, but I think I read somewhere that the full-painted style they are using is courtesy of Imaginary Friends Studios, who've done some great work. Check out some of the stuff they have up on their site. Did "Zid" do the cover?

Tom McLean said...

Actually, Zid did NOT do the cover pictured. But the style is close to the interior.

I've checked out Imaginary Friends' site before — they definitely do some very nice work.