COMICS: Dreams of Sci-Fi Indian Sopranos

A trio of comics that stretch the boundaries of the medium

J. Caleb Mozzocco

The use of the word "chronicles" in its title isn't the only prejudice I had against Scott Christian Sava's computer-illustrated fantasy The Dreamland Chronicles. Like the computer-animated films it resembles, Sava's book seems to have trouble rendering human beings convincingly, and they tend to have a spongey, toy-like lifelessness.

Nevertheless, Sava has some serious storytelling chops, and has clearly mastered the delicate dance between repeating images and words that is comics. The unusual aesthetic, which is achieved not only by Sava, but also by a gigantic crew that includes costume, character and set designers, is persistent and cumulative in its charms, and I was eventually won over by it.

The story follows two college-aged brothers, one of whom used to visit a fantasy land in his dreams known as Dreamland. It was populated by a fairy straight out of Peter Pan, a rock giant straight out of The NeverEnding Story and a hot elfin babe right out of Dungeons & Dragons, and he had many adventures with these imaginary friends.

Then he grew up, and he quit dreaming. When he suddenly finds himself back in Dreamland, however, he's thrust into an adventure involving air pirates, a talking dragon and the similarly grown-up versions of his friends. The story may be a pastiche, but it's a pleasant enough one, and the uniquely elaborate visuals certainly serve as the necessary new coat of paint old ideas need.


Para


Penny-Farthing Press

This graphic novel by writer Stuart Moore and a quintet of artists is science fiction in the best sense. It's a term which has, of late, too often come to refer to works which have the trappings of science fiction, rather than works of fiction that are driven by, you know, science.

But this is the read deal, borrowing ideas from cutting-edge particle theory and using them as a foundation for a smart, scary, action/adventure story.

In the mid-1980s, a mysterious and tragic accident at a 28-mile supercollider buried under the desert closes a facility down for 20 years, while the radiation wears off. Now a team of scientists descend into the facility and find there are no bodies at all within; however, there seem to be strange ghost-like creatures haunting the place, and only a single clue as to what might have happened—the word "Para" scrawled on a wall in blood.

What the hell's going on? That's what our intrepid group of five seek to discover. Moore's characters are so generic and reducible to types that they seem to have come from Hollywood central casting, but the paranormal science mystery they're unraveling is fascinating nonetheless.


Scalped No. 1


DC/Vertigo

The pitch for this new series is "The Sopranos on an Indian reservation." It's about Dashiell "Dash" Bad Horse, a bad kid who had begun falling in with the wrong crowd on the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in South Dakota before running away and disappearing for years.

When Dash finally does return, at the start of this first issue, he's a seemingly suicidal tough guy with a shaved head and a set of nunchucks, starting and winning enough bar fights to gain the attention of Red Crow, a sort of murderous Kingfish character who rules the Rez as if it were his own private feudal kingdom.

While "The Sopranos on an Indian reservation" probably makes for a better blurb, a more accurate one might be "Walking Tall remake meets The Fast and the Furious ... on an Indian reservation." It's pretty cheesy and cliché-ridden, but that "on an Indian reservation" part gives all those clichés a new spin.

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