Monday, July 7, 2014

Comic Review: Pretty Deadly Vol. 1


    The image on the cover is interesting.  Flipping through, it has a Weird West mixed with Sci-Fi vibe.  OK.  Let’s give it a try.  Alas, they can’t all be winners.  Kelly Sue Deconnick’s Western (there’s no Science Fiction, it turns out) is a mishmash of humdrum Anime/Manga gags, tossed into a mixing pot and…well, no.  It almost makes you think something good might have come out the other end, but it just gets worse.  It’s just tired retreads presented in a tired way.  And the cutesy crap with the butterfly and the bunny skeleton?  What is this, a 1990s Vertigo comic?


    The art ranges from blah to aggressively ugly.  Some of the coloring is interesting, but without good pencils/inks to hang it on, who cares?  It might have worked in a different comic, or one where the story really captured me.  This ain’t it.  The writing starts out fine, but becomes more, I don’t know, opaque(?), as the book progresses.  And all the ideas feel like they came out of a dozen anime TV series from the 90s.  And Deathface Ginny?  Ugh.  Why not give her an over-sized gun-sword to complete the stupid image?


    Anyway, this is another one of those series I hear a lot of people saying good things about, and I just scratch my head.  Shoddy writing, dull ideas handled in dull ways, ugly art.  I wouldn’t recommend it.  I will not be reading on.



Pretty Deadly
Author: Kelly Sue Deconnick
Artist: Emma Rios
Publisher: Image Comics
ISBN: 978-1-60706-962-1

-Matthew J. Constantine

No comments:

Post a Comment