Comics I Bought: December 18, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got seven new comics plus a hard cover collection. It's been a while since I bought that many new comics in a single week:

Fear Agent - 25

Ex Machina - 40

Buffy Season Eight - 20

Stormwatch Post Human Division - 17

Rex Mundi Vol 2 - 15

The Walking Dead - 56

The X-Files -2

The Lone Ranger - Volume 2 Hardcover

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Green Lantern "Will World" by J.M. Dematteis and Seth Fisher

I picked this book up to check out the art of Seth Fisher. I had never heard of Fisher before learning of his untimely death at the age of 33 back in February 2006. A sad way to learn about an artist but I liked the examples of his work that were published along with the tributes to him.

Fisher's art is far out and fantastic with a thin lined Moebius/Geof Darrow look to it. His imagination was grand and apparent in this book. He drew all sorts of wacky and wild stuff to fill "Will World" to the brim with different life forms.

Though his storytelling is pretty solid he used more of an all over drawing technique to fill this book up with life. What I mean by that is that he doesn't visually cut the story down to its essential parts but fills up the page with a variety of drawings that don't necessarily have to do with the story. That can distract from the story but gives the reader a lot to look at. It's a matter of taste weather you like that sort of storytelling or not. I'm ambivalent towards it.

Though the art was very good I have a problem with the story itself. First of all its main plot device is that Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) has amnesia. Yes, that most hackneyed driver of bad plots, amnesia. There have probably been more cases of amnesia in fiction than in real life. And it's rarely pulled off well.

Hal Jordan wakes up in the dream like "Will World" not knowing who he is, where he is, or what he is supposed to do. We go on the journey with him through this lavishly illustrated world until he discovers his identity and ultimately triumphs. Except we already know who he is. Half of the questions he asks himself are obvious to anyone who has ever read a Green lantern comic.

The problem with the plot (the script was fine) is inherent in well known company owned character comics. Dematteis was trying to do something different, something other than a typical super hero story, but economic necessity means that all parties involved need a well known character as the lead.

Story-wise there was almost no reason for this book to star Green Lantern. The ending involving the Green Lantern's real world seemed tacked on and was the least interesting part of the book. A whole new character could have been created for this story and it might have been better. The story would have been freed from the shackles of what the reader already knew. But I doubt the book would ever have been green lighted without the Green Lantern.

This book is an example of the double edged sword of trying to do something new and different with an established character. It didn't satisfy me, a fan of the new and different, and it probably didn't satisfy Green Lantern fans. But the art is pretty to look at.