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Comic Review by:
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"Sweet" Dan Sweet |
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Executive Producer: |
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Sam Worthington |
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Created by: |
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Michael and John Schwarz |
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Publisher: |
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Radical
Comics |
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“The book looks pretty, as pretty as snapshots of some wannabe film can be.
Leonardo Manco and Lapham attempt to turn a turd into a diamond, but there’s
just not enough intensity, enough meaning for this fan." |
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 See,
this just goes to illustrate the point I’ve made previously that comics have
become the testing ground for movie/television writers who don’t have the
resources to film their dream projects. Instead they hire an artist and put
together a glorified storyboard in the guise of a comic book, not so that they
can potentially shift gears and move into the world of monthly serials, but
rather to experiment, see if their book finds an audience, and hopefully, maybe
some studio will bankroll production. RADICAL Publishing has not been shy about
admitting their mission in all of this, and their latest offering “Damaged”
reads more like a crumby direct-to-video movie than a sub-par comic book.
It’s “The Punisher” only he’s a cop, or was a cop, and he has a brother, and his
brother is a cop, or y’know, WAS a cop, or whatever. Both of these men have
their own ideas as to what justice is; one on the side of the established
authority, one with his eye on doing things himself. Obviously this puts the two
brothers at odds with one another, and when one of them is able to take out
twenty two men all by himself, well it don’t seem much like a fair kind of
fight, if you ask me. Anyway, Henry is the badass, and Frank, the elder brother
is a police commander on his way out the door, neither one is especially
remarkable, unless you count Henry’s ability to murder as many bad people as he
feels like without so much as a iota of a problem. It’s unreal; it’s like that
scene in “The Boondock Saints” in which The Duke just constantly merc’s everyone
in every room he’s in, only because this is a comic book and not a motion
picture some of the badassery is lost in translation.
This is a static medium. It is. It’s two-dimensional images laid out on paper
and delivered in the form of a twenty-two (or more) page magazine once a month.
Just because there’s been a great deal of success and money to come out of the
medium in the past ten or so years (and more in the most recent of those ten),
everyone thinks that THEIR comic book is the next big Hollywood hit movie, just
waiting to be discovered. This isn’t a bonus for the industry, it’s not
attracting writer’s from other mediums with hopes of writing their favorite
characters, or even create NEW characters that they hope last as long as Batman,
Spider-Man, or even Spawn. This is the idea that people can waltz in and out of
our industry and shuffle their feet and make a million dollar deal happen, all
while perverting the idea of what comics meant at one time or another.
I remember being a kid, before the advent of the comic book movie. Sure, there
was Superman, but that was a character that had dabbled in pretty much every
medium since the Fourties; there was Batman, whose television show I watched
religiously (reruns, of course), and when ’89 rolled around and Michael Keaton
first donned the Batsuit and wrought havoc to the villains of Gotham City I
remember sitting in the theater with a smile on my face the entire time. It
would be about eleven years after Burton’s “Batman” that Hollywood really
started to pay attention to the world of comic books again, and it’s been
balls-to-the-wall ever since. All sorts of books, from the iconic to the
obscure, are getting licensed and produced and scripted and adapted and piloted
and whatever other word you can slide in there somewhere. It’s all great, and it
all sucks.
If comics aren’t really about the comics anymore, then what are they? Are they
monthly commercials for the next FOX Studios big-budget bombshell, or the next
ABC television series? Are we solely purchasing this shit with hopes of seeing
it on screen? Wasn’t there a time that we were simply excited to walk into a
comic store, or a book store, or a drug store and continue the adventures of our
greatest modern-day myths and legends? With more and more comics crediting
‘Executive Producers’ and less and less offering QUALITY ideas that are bound to
last forty, fifty, hell sixty years, what the hell is the draw, pun intended.
I’m not some unsuspecting market research survey responder. I didn’t sign up to
support some un-financed film project. I walk into a comic store to buy comics,
not to let Hollywood know where their next “Green Lantern”, “Jonah Hex”, or
“Hulk” money should be coming from.
I almost feel bad for David Lapham, as he’s an obviously talented guy who keeps
getting nothing but shit work. He’s a hired-gun, and when some guy with
movie-money comes-a-calling it’s gotta be hard to maintain artistic integrity,
shit, I wouldn’t. So here we are, with a Punisher-lite character and a story
that really doesn’t resonate at all with me. The book looks pretty, as pretty as
snapshots of some wannabe film can be. Leonardo Manco and Lapham attempt to turn
a turd into a diamond, but there’s just not enough intensity, enough meaning for
this fan. No thanks, guys.
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All Books/Characters pictured herein are © Copyright 2011 by their respective
owners. No rights given or implied by Alternate Reality, Incorporated.
Reviews © 2011 Alternate Reality, Inc.
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