artists — Blog — The Art of J.Schiek

When I think about malls, three things come immediately to mind and the first of them is shitty retail and restaurant jobs that neither pay nor tip enough from the zombie movie extras that come wandering through like ambulatory bits of over and under dressed furniture. Did that sound bitter? Maybe a little. But if you’ve ever worked at or in or around a mall you know what I’m talking about. The people who stand in the same half hour line with you at Starbucks only to get to the barista and have no idea what to order let alone why they came and stood in the line in the first place? The obstinate lady hassling the cashier at Old Navy over why her purchases aren’t free because her husband is in the Navy? Okay, yeah. I’m bitter. Let’s get to the second thing, and then we’ll spend the rest of our time talking about the third, shall we? Yes. Let’s shall. The second is Robin Scherbatsky (How I Met Your Mother) in her teenage pop star alter ego, Robin Sparkles, and now, goddammit, I have that freaking hook stuck in my head and oh my, my, suffice it to say: I. Hate. Malls. I do. Or at least, I did until quite recently when I was blessed with the opportunity to read Mall, written by Michael Moreci (Wasted Space/The Plot) and Gary Dauberman (Annabelle), drawn and colored by Zak Hartong (Albatross) and Addison Duke (Charlie’s Angels vs. Bionic Woman) respectively, and lavishly lettered by Jim Campbell (Hoax Hunters), which, while it didn’t change my mind about malls in general, did give me the best time I’ve had at a mall since before I hit legal employment age.

Perhaps I’ve said this before, it feels like something I say a lot, but I am a sucker for post apocalyptic fiction. Hell, I’m a fan of post apocalyptic facts, though categorically, those don’t yet exist. Ever since I read Stephen King’s The Stand in my early twenties, I have developed a deep sense of longing for the echoic silence of a world unplugged at last. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was my feel good book of 2007. Other favorites include Swan Song by Robert McCammon (a worthy inclusion, though nowhere near as good as The Stand, if perhaps a few pages longer) and, from Comicdom, Robert Kirkman’s excellent, and now extinct The Walking Dead (Image). Most recently, Vault Comics, the party responsible for Mall, had scratched my apocalypse itch with another great series, Resonant (DB Andry, Ale Aragon & Jason Wordie), and they’ve continued to scratch, finding places I didn’t even know were itching. Then along came The Mall to hit that almost unreachable place between my literary shoulder blades. It was like I was reaching and reaching and someone just put a chopstick in my hand and then…Well, bliss, obviously. Let’s talk about it:

Mall takes place in…Umm, a mall? Duh? That part kind of goes without saying. Instead of getting smacked in the eyes and ears with an endless barrage of storewide sales signs and massage kiosks, we get a modern quasi-retelling of Hamlet. We open like a new season of Game Of Thrones (HBO) with a sort of recap, a just-the-highlights version of how and why the world we’re about to see went from new car to fubar in six panels. However, it’s not until we turn over Zak Hartong’s beautifully desolate splash of an urban shopping mall, cowering beneath a churning sky of apocalyptic dust clouds that we start to home in on the individuals who will thread our emotions through one end of this story and out the other. (And brace yourself: If you have children, some of these vignettes will really pull at your emotional short and curlies)

The opening pursuit works beautifully as a storytelling device to give us a rapid, breathless look at the world we’re about to cohabit with these characters. A young woman with an as yet indeterminate bundle in her arms runs from a nightmarish combo of a Lost Boys version of Star Fox and Bob’s Big Boy. It’s something to pay attention to as these colorful gunmen relieve the woman of her bundle, in this case, a squalling infant, as it portends to the political undercurrents of what we come upon next.

Andre emerges right away as the quintessence of antihero. Born into wealth and the relative power it provides, our first glimpse of him waking up sprawled against the bed in what appears to be a cheap motel room—it isn’t, can’t be, but it looks like one—with the bloodied, terror faced corpse of the Mall’s titular leader, Delmon Gold. Without doing a play by play of the entire book, suffice it to say that while as readers we are pretty much instantly satisfied of Andre’s innocence, if not entirely convinced of who the real killer is, this issue becomes something of a master class in breakneck, breathless pacing and action pursuit sequences. I found myself really enjoying Andre as a character with the three dimensionality given him by Moreci and Dauberman, who clearly know what the hell they are doing. Andre is Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, tossed in the cocktail shaker with a couple extra fingers of privilege and bravado, then shaken (not stirred) to be-caped perfection. His contrast and purpose in this case is a wonderfully made combination of Nellie Oleson and Sarah Connor, Delmon Gold’s daughter, Tess. Exposition is handled well and delicately (wellicately?) through Tarantino-esque bursts of tense dialogue. Moreci and Dauberman appear to be working over time to make sure that readers get a clear sense of their world while not mansplaining everything into the dust with blind condescension.

Now, this is something else I know I say a lot, but as a comic book creator myself, I like to make sure that everything that appears on the page does so to reinforce the story being told. That goes for the art without saying, but colors and balloon shapes can also be used to tell the story if their relationship to the line art is handled correctly. Throughout the book, a theme emerges, that of bright, dominant oranges and reds contrasted against a sickly, poisonous (but ultimately, alluring) mint green. The colors in this case uphold the notion that this is a volatile, even explosive society that is in a constant state of denial of its underlying disease, that which affects all major civilizations that do not practice concerted introspection to ensure that policy never becomes more important than populace. In that, Addison Duke has invoked many a colored wonder upon these pages, and his tones harmonize wonderfully with Hartong’s energetic and textured line art. All of the shots are handled marvelously; nothing jars, or otherwise ejects the reader out of the world of the story at any point. The action scenes in particular should be a major draw to this book. All of that narrative grittiness slides as smooth as whipped butter on a teflon pancake.

I’ll end this with something else I’ve been saying a lot lately, and that is that Vault Comics is really delivering the goods these days. In an industry that seems confused over what its next big move should be, whether so and so should go with so and Sony, or dizzy itself out in the Disneyness, it is refreshing if not entirely inspiring to see a company that still puts story forth as its opening move in every game. Mall joins Resonant and the forthcoming The Plot as a title I will be monitoring with intense interest, and of course, making a regular part of my pull down at the LCS. Tending to let my words imply a numeric score, I don’t always end with such, but in this case, as I’ve run my mouth a little more than I had initially planned, I’ll drop a Cliffs Notes version here and say that Mall gets a solid 10/10 as a delicious first course in what promises to be an epic meal. Now if only I could get that goddamn Robin Sparkles song out of my head…

Let’s go to the MAAAAALLLLL!!!

Uncle J

Perhaps the only thing I enjoy more than people giving me free stuff is people ascribing worth to my thoughts and opinions. And sometimes—just sometimes—I get the pleasure of enjoying both sensations simultaneously. Call it a fringe benefit of being a “pro” in the comics industry that in making comics, you develop some degree of authority on how well others have made their comics. Very recently, I had the honor and pleasure to take receipt of a publicity package for Fraser Campbell and Katie Fleming’s “Heart Of Steal,” ostensibly an amalgam of action, comedy, science fiction and a soupçon of heartache and drama. While it has taken me longer than usual to get around to reading it—I come by the superlative “Most Overbooked Man In Comics” honestly—I like to keep my word on these things.

Mr. Campbell had asked in the offing that I “be gentle” in my writeup of this, his most recent outing. For my own part, gentility really goes without saying. Typically, I try to follow the age old maxim that if one doesn’t have something nice to say, they had best just say nothing at all. Obviously, that ship has already sailed. But unless a piece is provocatively bad or offensive, or a negligent product from a company that has and should know how to produce better, I generally just don’t review those works. Nor do I name them. Sorry.

I’m a big Beatles fan. Odd thing to insert here, right? I bring it up because I’m also a fan of homonyms, so right away, the title caught me pleasantly off guard. “Heart Of Steal,” which sounds the same as “heart of steel,” but that shift in spelling gives us a subtle nod as to what we can expect from this story. The cover image itself reminded me sharply of Ro Stein’s work on Christopher Sebela’s darkly hilarious “Crowded,” which just resumed in its second volume about a month ago. It’s a style that sort of straddles the gap between cartoon and realism but is still western enough not to be mistaken for manga, or a collected newspaper strip. The image itself depicts a young woman repairing some sort of futuristic wrist gauntlet with a brace of comparatively archaic hand tools. The skyline behind her depicts a city that could be the future, but is tinged enough with urban wear and tear so as to be temporally ambiguous.

Now, insomuch as I’m a fan of The Beatles and homonyms, I am not a fan of expository dialog. It is often heavy handed, condescending and is rarely if ever done well. Much of contemporary science fiction, and in particular comic books where there is little enough room to hook a reader as it is, is rife with the stuff. That said, Campbell has done a good job here of stating a bare minimum and letting the story tell itself. We begin with one of those Past v. Present kind of moments where we see our troupe of protagonists as a group of youngsters (Michael, Oscar and Toni), doing as youngsters do and talking about the things they want to do, jobs they want to have once they reach adulthood. Oscar wants to be a cop, and Toni wants to be kind of awkwardly evasive and let the transition into the future reveal that her career ambitions are a bit less noble than Oscar’s. Michael, at this point, is a wild card, however he does turn up in due course, dressed to the nines and sporting an entourage of bespoke muscle. He works for a man called Ray who, we find out, has a mech heart to replace the real one that Toni has just stolen. Not figuratively. Girl’s got herself a jet powered medical ice chest backpack. Would we were all so fortunate. Oscar further informs us that mech hearts are not the in thing at the moment, that Ray will probably want to kill whomever took his more fashionable organic model. Remember what I said about expository dialog a little ways back? Well, this is what it looks like when it’s done right. It’s information given only on a need to know basis, and Campbell does not trip over his own lips trying to over explain the world he’s already busy trying to sell us. Meanwhile, Michael’s and Oscar’s antagonistic friendship—which Campbell has clued us into that very early on—becomes one of dubious alliance as they pool their efforts to take down Toni. I would not be surprised to see more of their personal insecurities presenting themselves as more pointed jabs in future outings for this series. Meanwhile, Toni, their mutual quarry, is absconding with a human heart in a refrigerated medical backpack. Oscar wants her because, well, that shit’s illegal, innit? And Michael wants her because Ray wants his heart back, and the impression we get of Ray is that he’s probably not the kind of guy accustomed to asking twice. In all, the foot, car and motorcycle chases abound in this one, and it succeeded in its most base directive of creating desire for more on my part. Now, let’s talk about the art.

Before I begin in on this, I would like to issue the following disclaimer that I am, myself, a professional comic book artist and, in addition thereto, also teach Figure Drawing for Animation at Cal State Fullerton. I don’t say those as bragging points, only to point out that my opinion of comic art can sometimes reflect an unconscious bias toward the way I would have done things under the same circumstances and, as a teacher, I am a stickler for gesture, form and anatomy. I had said at the beginning that the cover art reminded me of Ro Stein’s work on “Crowded,” and I stand by that comparison. Katie Fleming has very obviously put a lot of time and effort into her art, and there are areas of strength that truly shine. However, there are some areas where a change in camera angle or clearer staging would have led to less confusing action. I’m specifically referencing the catalyst for the major chase scene at the end where Toni drops down on Michael from above. Her sudden appearance doesn’t convey a clear sense of direction in terms of where she is dropping in from. Additionally, there are a number of panels that would have benefitted greatly from having the background, or some sort of atmospheric perspective drawn in. Dropping the background from a panel is by no means a capitol offense, and can have a profound effect on the impact of a scene when its absence is used to highlight a key action happening with one or more characters. Coming from an art background myself, as I have said, I can certainly attest to being all too painfully aware of my areas of strength and areas of weakness. Backgrounds are bloody hard sometimes, and tedious pretty much at all times. They are at their best when they become a character in the story, which is not an easy thing to do. While Fleming’s delivery on this last is inconsistent, there are some panels throughout that I found absolutely stunning. In particular, page 9 panel 5, which gives us a birds eye view of the chase sequence: Superb. Also page 18 panel 4 show’s Fleming’s talent for conveying a huge amount of action information with a bare minimum of line work. It almost looks like a rough thumbnail or early layout drawing but it just…WORKS. And it does so magnificently. This is an artist I will be keeping an eye on, as what I’ve seen here shows great promise of things to come.

Last but not least, there is the lettering category to address. Any time I see Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (Hass OE, as he is known on his indescribably awesome YouTube channel, “Strip Panel Naked”) I know I’m in good hands. Hass is a very busy man, it seems, doing up letters not only for “Heart Of Steal” but also the wonderfully dark “Killer Groove” from Aftershock in addition to a robust list of other clients, maintaining his now Eisner winning publication “Panel X Panel” and recording/editing new episodes of the aforementioned “Strip Panel Naked.” For all that, his SFX lettering in the chase scenes leaves very little VROOM for criticism. Hass knows how to make the SFX serve the action and the story and pulls off the written pacing and verbo-visual elements with aplomb. I would argue the best thing that can be said for any letterer of comics is that they’re at their best when the letters go almost entirely unnoticed. Good lettering should feel like you’re hearing the words more than reading them. There should be no struggle to identify one letter over another, and the surrounding balloons (if any) should leave enough space for everything to fit comfortably without seeming either claustrophobic or isolated. In that regard, Mr. Otsmane-Elhaou delivers yet again.

Like I said in the beginning, if I don’t like something, I simply won’t write a review of it. Typically I won’t say anything at all except, perhaps, to mention the book in polite company or warn a friend or collaborator from wasting their money on said book. While “Heart Of Steal” feels unmistakably indie in its execution, I believe that that is entirely the point. In summary, I would give this book a solid 8 out of 10, based out of the above statements and observations. “Heart Of Steal” is set to run a proposed four issue length, which I look forward to seeing more of as they become available. If you see this one pop up in your Twitter feed, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw support its direction. I’ve known Mr. Campbell long enough to identify him as a kindred spirit, one who has a deep and abiding love of all things comics. I think he’s got a good team on his side and I can only see this book getting better from here, and this was by no means a bad start. “Heart Of Steal” is seeing its way to release through the Cabal Comics imprint, and I’ll certainly be on the lookout for more as they become available.