RED ONE, VOLUME 2

"UNDERCOVER"
Created by Xavier Dorison & Terry Dodson
Script: Xavier Dorison with the collaboration of Antoine Cristau
Pencils & Colors: Terry Dodson | Inks: Rachel Dodson | Letters: Clayton Cowles

Here we go again. I wrote about RED ONE volume 1 last March, and despite Terry Dodson's beautiful artwork, I wasn't terribly impressed with the story. But these volumes are so cheap that I decided to give the series one more chance to impress me. Did it? Let's find out...

When last we left our Soviet heroine, Vera Yelnikov, she was in battle with the Carpenter, a masked agent of a sinister American fundamentalist named Jacky Core, in Los Angeles. Vera rescues the Carpenter's target, a pregnant lesbian named Judith, and even apparently kills the Carpenter by running his truck off the road and into the water.

From there we begin to learn a few things that -- at least to my year-plus-old recollection -- were either unclear or glossed over in the prior volume: namely, gubernatorial candidate Jacky is a pastor who entertains her flock by showing them a post-World War II fundamentalist film called THE FARM, and that Vera's American employer, porn producer Lew Garner, is working on a salacious remake of THE FARM, called SEX FARM, which he believes will (somehow) ruin Jacky's reputation and cost her the election.

This is a weird book. It's really kind of obvious that it's written by someone born and raised overseas, because his grasp of how things work in the United States is tenuous. Early on, when Vera rushes Judith into a hospital, she's told bluntly that it's a private institution and the doctors will do nothing for the beaten and dying woman. Yeah, we have privatized healthcare in the U.S., and yeah, the bills for the sort of treatment Judith needs would probably sink her into crippling debt... but find me a hospital anywhere in this country that would simply and coldly turn away a mortally injured pregnant woman. You can't. Neither now, nor in 1977, and especially not in Los Angeles, has such a place ever existed.

RED ONE, VOLUME 1

"WELCOME TO AMERICA"
Created by Xavier Dorison & Terry Dodson
Script: Xavier Dorison | Pencils & Colors: Terry Dodson
Inks: Rachel Dodson | Letters: Clayton Cowles

It seems working on MUSE was an agreeable experience for Terry Dodson, as he subsequently chose not to re-up his Marvel contract and decided instead to continue working in the European comic market. The first follow-up to MUSE comes in the form of RED ONE, co-created by Dodson and French writer Xavier Dorison, which received a domestic release from Image in 2015 in the form of two single comic book issues followed by a lovely oversized hardcover album collecting both chapters together.

I had high hopes for this one for a few reasons. One, though I found the ultimate resolution of MUSE to be a bit iffy, I really did enjoy the story up until the eleventh hour twists came into play, and I found Dodson's artwork and colors to be tremendous. Two, from what advance material I saw, RED ONE was to be set in the seventies and feature a Cold War-themed plotline. For reasons even I don't entirely understand, I love the seventies. I'm fascinated by the decade and I tend to enjoy almost any period piece set in that timeframe.

Unfortunately, this first volume doesn't quite live up to my expectations.

The story concerns a fundamentalist movement in 1977 California, headed by gubernatorial candidate Jacky Core, which supports the actions of a vigilante called the Carpenter -- a man on a mission to cleanse the Los Angeles area of "undesirable" elements in the most violent ways imaginable. The KGB objects to Core's position, believing that if elected, she will work against an upcoming nuclear treaty and cause trouble for the Soviet Union down the line. To combat the Carpenter and undermine Core, KGB higher-ups send their best agent, Vera Yelnikov, to California to become a superhero and stand up for the Carpenter's oppressed victims.

MUSE (SONGES)

Writer: Denis-Pierre Filippi | Artist: Terry Dodson
Colorists: Rebecca Rendon & Terry Dodson | Translators: Quinn & Katia Donoghue

In 2004, France's Les Humanoïdes Associés published SONGES: CORALINE, volume one in a 2-book series written by Denis-Pierre Filippi and illustrated by Terry Dodson. The second volume, SONGES: CÉLIA, was finally released eight years later in 2012, and Humanoids, Inc. -- the American branch of Les Humanoïdes Associés -- released an English-language version collecting both books in one volume, retitled MUSE.

I'm not sure how, but I became aware of this book around 2008 and based on the images I found online, I fell in love with the artwork. Yes, it contains a ton of gratuitous cheesecake -- half the reason for hiring Terry Dodson, who here is able to shed far more clothes from his female protagonist than he'd be allowed in any mainstream American comic book -- but there's more to his work than that in these pages. The book is set primarily on the grounds of a sprawling estate in what is most likely rural France, at some undetermined point in the past. Dodson puts such remarkable work into the setting that one almost feels transported there through his illustrations, which appear to be reproduced directly from pencil art for a very "natural" feel, and which are complemented astoundingly by the lush color work of Rebecca Rendon and Dodson himself.

Our tale follows a young lady named Coraline, who arrives at the estate in response to an ad for a caretaker. Her charge is to be a brilliant boy named Vernère, who spends his days in a secret workshop constructing astounding mechanical devices, brewing unusually powerful nectars, and reading book after book. Coraline's job, as outlined by Vernère's housemaid and butler, is to get him out of the workshop and to help him rediscover his youth. And if Dodson's illustrations of the setting are a large part of the charm of this book, then his work on Vernère's fantastical devices is the other major attraction (taking his delightful renderings of Coraline in all manner of dress and undress for granted, of course). This stuff has sort of a turn-of-the-century steampunk vibe and while Steampunk as a genre has never really appealed to me, seeing such devices in this almost fairytale-like setting is very cool.

SPRINGTIME GRAB BAG

As I've done in past years, I plan to spend the majority of the spring on various assorted mini-series from publishers other than Marvel or DC. The next four Fridays will kick this off, beginning with THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST, a reprint of the manga serialized in NINTENDO POWER magazine back in the nineties.

After ZELDA, we'll take a look two offerings from artist Terry Dodson and a pair of European writers, D-P Filippi and Xavier Dorison -- MUSE and RED ONE. Following the Dodson experience, I've lined up a review of the first volume in Walter Simonson's RAGNARÖK series at IDW.

Then it's into the realm of sword and sorcery for the month of April, and our gateway to that genre will be a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE graphic novel I've owned for about thirty years, THE SUNBIRD LEGACY. Once that one's in the can, I'll be back to announce the second half of the Springtime Grab Bag, so stay tuned!

THE UNBOXING - FEBRUARY 2014

My second box of the year is a big one. As I think I've mentioned before, I have a large blind spot in my comic book knowledge when it comes to DC stuff. I've read plenty of mini-series and one-shots, but barely any ongoing series. So, since DC has been making a surprising effort to get some of their classic material into print, I've been biting. Among this month's books are SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL volume 8, continuing a reprint series DC began several years ago, and GREEN LANTERN: SECTOR 2814 volume 3.

My understanding is that one more Superman volume will finish John Byrne's run from the eighties, and whenever that comes to pass, I'll probably finally open the books and read them through. I bought volumes 1 through 7 on sale last year, and I'm watiing eagerly to read the whole set. The Green Lantern series, I believe, completes the original pre-CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS run of that series under that title. It was re-titled as GREEN LANTERN CORPS for the remainder of its existence, and one volume of that run is already in print. I'm uncertain how I will proceed with these books, but I'll get to them eventually.