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xterminal's review
4.0
Peter David, Fallen Angel (DC, 2004)
David kicks off a new, and very intriguing series, with an introduction from Harlan Ellison. Yeah, that Harlan Ellison, the old version of Mikey in the Life commercial-- the guy who hates everything. Curmudgeon though he may be, Ellison has some high praise for Peter David and his new series. I am certainly not more than a pale shadow of Harlan Ellison; I could spend the rest of my life working on my writing and I'd never get anywhere near that good. So all I can say is, well, the man is right.
Fallen Angel is probably the closest thing I've read in the past twenty years (save a few one-offs like Gaiman's Eternals) to a traditional superhero comic, but like Watchmen, this ain't your momma's superhero. Lee, the fallen angel of the title (we do not yet know if the title is literal or not), has come to the small Louisiana town of Bete Noire and set up shop to help the hopeless and downtrodden. There are, of course, a host of bad guys, though as things go in comics these days, once we meet them, we have to wonder if they're all bad, and the henchmen, of course, are varying shades of grey (usually in direct relation to their intelligence). Everyone's playing everyone against everyone else.
There's a grittiness to the language that reminds me of 100 Bullets without the dialect, though David grabs ahold of his story arc from the get-go (unlike Azzarello, who took four or five volumes to unload everything on us), and it does make for some fine reading. The action is fast, David has thought well ahead into his seemingly minor characters, and the artwork fits the story like a glove. This is quite a beginning. Can't wait to see where he goes from here. ****
David kicks off a new, and very intriguing series, with an introduction from Harlan Ellison. Yeah, that Harlan Ellison, the old version of Mikey in the Life commercial-- the guy who hates everything. Curmudgeon though he may be, Ellison has some high praise for Peter David and his new series. I am certainly not more than a pale shadow of Harlan Ellison; I could spend the rest of my life working on my writing and I'd never get anywhere near that good. So all I can say is, well, the man is right.
Fallen Angel is probably the closest thing I've read in the past twenty years (save a few one-offs like Gaiman's Eternals) to a traditional superhero comic, but like Watchmen, this ain't your momma's superhero. Lee, the fallen angel of the title (we do not yet know if the title is literal or not), has come to the small Louisiana town of Bete Noire and set up shop to help the hopeless and downtrodden. There are, of course, a host of bad guys, though as things go in comics these days, once we meet them, we have to wonder if they're all bad, and the henchmen, of course, are varying shades of grey (usually in direct relation to their intelligence). Everyone's playing everyone against everyone else.
There's a grittiness to the language that reminds me of 100 Bullets without the dialect, though David grabs ahold of his story arc from the get-go (unlike Azzarello, who took four or five volumes to unload everything on us), and it does make for some fine reading. The action is fast, David has thought well ahead into his seemingly minor characters, and the artwork fits the story like a glove. This is quite a beginning. Can't wait to see where he goes from here. ****
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