Stephanie Kay
Mar 15, 2008, 10:41 pm
<a href="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/dc/0308/YLIA_Cv1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/dc/0308/YLIA_Cv1t.jpg" alt="Young Liars #1" hspace=10 align=left></a> Reviewer: Stephanie Kay, children_of_paradise@hotmail.co.uk
Story Title: At A Thousand Miles An Hour
Y’know it’s been fun an’ all. At a thousand miles an hour we hit the wall.
Writer & Artist: David Lapham
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
Cover Art: David Lapham
Assistant Editor: Angela Ruffino
Editor: Shelly Bond
Young Liars created by: David Lapham
Published By: Vertigo / DC Comics (www.dc-comics.com)
Okay I’m slightly late with getting my thoughts up about Vertigo’s latest, Young Liars. Thank you shop sell-outs and hostile home life. But at least it’s allowed me to think about the radically changing landscape of Vertigo at the moment, and my own preoccupation with it - in fact I may as well turn to reviewing Vertigo exclusively for 2008 at this rate. Young Liars is the eagerly anticipated ongoing by David Lapham, the brilliant mind behind critically acclaimed cult favourite Stray Bullets.
Lapham has already had a previous outing for Vertigo, with the noir flavoured Silverfish. So there were a few presumptions that said graphic novel would provide some insight into the styles used for this on-going series. And perhaps you’d be a little wrong. That’s not to say I’m starting by claiming Young Liars is ‘worse’ than Silverfish, not at all. But if Lapham has ever been pegged with a reputation of ‘trademark black and white moviedom art-work’ and the overt ‘mature darker indie’ movement, then Young Liars seems to be a step away from that. Young Liars is quite Vertigo-lized.
Sadie Dawkins has had a personality-change recently, after someone decided to shoot her. Or rather because a bullet had permanently lodged in her brain. It’s not known how long she’ll actually live, nor is it known who actually shot her in the first place. But it’s water under the bridge for Sadie in some regards, as she’s now an amnesiac and a bona-fide action junkie with little to no understanding of ‘standard’ human emotions. She is, in short, a walking train wreck waiting to happen. It’s also worth mentioning that Sadie Dawkins is the ‘missing’ daughter and heiress of multi-millionaire Lloyd T. Browning, and she is about to drag along an array of social not-so-oddities in a global adventure seeking massive fortune.
Young Liars stood out to me in the Vertigo previews alongside Madame Xanadu (which still hasn’t been given a release date) because of the rarity of having a dynamic female as the central protagonist. Although strictly speaking, Sadie is more of a joint-lead with Danny in Young Liars - her brute to his manipulative brains. It sounds a little glib to give a comic a chance primarily because of this reason, but in all sincerity it (she) does help Young Liars make more of a memorable first impression. We’ve been in short supply of new charismatic female Vertigo ‘icons-in-the-making’ since Risa in Bite Club.
That said there are a lot of characters and plot-making introduced in this opening issue, which slightly steals Sadie’s thunder. It might well have been more advantageous to witness more ‘involved’ Sadie scenes rather than displaying her rashness in brief detached snippets. Thus it would make a bigger impression on the reader before plunging us into the adventure itself. She’s the main draw after-all, and if she’s written well in subsequent issues, she’s likely to be the number one reason for me sticking with this.
It is quite interesting to see how Danny is introduced himself though, particularly as he’s taken the role of narrator and ‘the regular guy’. I won’t hold my breath on that one, especially if you’ve read the solicitation for this issue and his lying habit. That totally casts his narration into doubt from the get-go, although it’s bit worrying because it’s hard to identify his blatant lies at this point in the story. Lapham does particularly well in creating an intriguing dynamic between Danny and Sadie - the former is an innocent watchful ‘foil’ at best, and a creepy puppet master at worst. I did really enjoy other aspects of Young Liars too, most especially its humour and how Sadie takes advice to the utmost extreme (“My body’s a temple, assh*le!”) The supporting characters are sort of obligatory misfits (the bulimic, the transvestite, the nymphomaniac etc) but they can probably grow beyond their archetypes and will certainly provide some entertaining interaction until then.
On the other hand then, I suppose the biggest grumble is how congested it feels. Loughridge is an excellent colourist and I usually find his choices to be absolutely flawless, so I don’t know if some colour combinations here were his own choice or Laphams. Here characters often tend to be ‘tinged’ with quite muted colours, and then backgrounds appear in solid deep colours or even fluorescents. It seems a little ‘off’, probably because it makes the foreground part (usually the characters themselves) appear a little drab. There has been some wonderful psychedelic coloring over in The Programme recently so I know it can definitely work. I would perhaps have preferred if the interiors were done with colouring techniques similar to the ones employed by Lapham on the cover.
Another fairly common complaint that is kicking around is that Young Liars looks ‘standard Vertigo’ - that it reduces Lapham’s active style into a comparatively ‘busy’ one, which you’d find quite commonly over in Hellblazer and Lucifer. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps if the comic were in black and white, or used coloring sparsely (e.g. Casanova) it would appear a little more experimental. And I must admit the black and white ‘flashbacks’ do have their own charm.
Overall, it’s a good first issue, although whether it’s good enough to survive the hastily threatened ‘Vertigo chopping block’ of recent remains to be seen. It’s got plenty of time to develop a following though, and I’m personally happy to invest in a few more issues to see if it takes flight. As mentioned earlier, I feel the decisive factor in this will be Sadie’s development and progression. She’s probably the one with the most appeal, although she’s also the most problematic to understand emotionally, and quite enigmatic despite her extroverted hedonism. I’m quite taken with the idea that this comic depicts Sadie’s swansong - the story about her life and death. I like carefree characters who have an underlined tragic fate to them. But seeing as Danny claimed it would be about her life and death, we can probably assert it won’t be.
RATING:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vhalf.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vnone.jpg
Buy Young Liars at X-World, and save! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2972&cat=YOUNG+LIARS)
Story Title: At A Thousand Miles An Hour
Y’know it’s been fun an’ all. At a thousand miles an hour we hit the wall.
Writer & Artist: David Lapham
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
Cover Art: David Lapham
Assistant Editor: Angela Ruffino
Editor: Shelly Bond
Young Liars created by: David Lapham
Published By: Vertigo / DC Comics (www.dc-comics.com)
Okay I’m slightly late with getting my thoughts up about Vertigo’s latest, Young Liars. Thank you shop sell-outs and hostile home life. But at least it’s allowed me to think about the radically changing landscape of Vertigo at the moment, and my own preoccupation with it - in fact I may as well turn to reviewing Vertigo exclusively for 2008 at this rate. Young Liars is the eagerly anticipated ongoing by David Lapham, the brilliant mind behind critically acclaimed cult favourite Stray Bullets.
Lapham has already had a previous outing for Vertigo, with the noir flavoured Silverfish. So there were a few presumptions that said graphic novel would provide some insight into the styles used for this on-going series. And perhaps you’d be a little wrong. That’s not to say I’m starting by claiming Young Liars is ‘worse’ than Silverfish, not at all. But if Lapham has ever been pegged with a reputation of ‘trademark black and white moviedom art-work’ and the overt ‘mature darker indie’ movement, then Young Liars seems to be a step away from that. Young Liars is quite Vertigo-lized.
Sadie Dawkins has had a personality-change recently, after someone decided to shoot her. Or rather because a bullet had permanently lodged in her brain. It’s not known how long she’ll actually live, nor is it known who actually shot her in the first place. But it’s water under the bridge for Sadie in some regards, as she’s now an amnesiac and a bona-fide action junkie with little to no understanding of ‘standard’ human emotions. She is, in short, a walking train wreck waiting to happen. It’s also worth mentioning that Sadie Dawkins is the ‘missing’ daughter and heiress of multi-millionaire Lloyd T. Browning, and she is about to drag along an array of social not-so-oddities in a global adventure seeking massive fortune.
Young Liars stood out to me in the Vertigo previews alongside Madame Xanadu (which still hasn’t been given a release date) because of the rarity of having a dynamic female as the central protagonist. Although strictly speaking, Sadie is more of a joint-lead with Danny in Young Liars - her brute to his manipulative brains. It sounds a little glib to give a comic a chance primarily because of this reason, but in all sincerity it (she) does help Young Liars make more of a memorable first impression. We’ve been in short supply of new charismatic female Vertigo ‘icons-in-the-making’ since Risa in Bite Club.
That said there are a lot of characters and plot-making introduced in this opening issue, which slightly steals Sadie’s thunder. It might well have been more advantageous to witness more ‘involved’ Sadie scenes rather than displaying her rashness in brief detached snippets. Thus it would make a bigger impression on the reader before plunging us into the adventure itself. She’s the main draw after-all, and if she’s written well in subsequent issues, she’s likely to be the number one reason for me sticking with this.
It is quite interesting to see how Danny is introduced himself though, particularly as he’s taken the role of narrator and ‘the regular guy’. I won’t hold my breath on that one, especially if you’ve read the solicitation for this issue and his lying habit. That totally casts his narration into doubt from the get-go, although it’s bit worrying because it’s hard to identify his blatant lies at this point in the story. Lapham does particularly well in creating an intriguing dynamic between Danny and Sadie - the former is an innocent watchful ‘foil’ at best, and a creepy puppet master at worst. I did really enjoy other aspects of Young Liars too, most especially its humour and how Sadie takes advice to the utmost extreme (“My body’s a temple, assh*le!”) The supporting characters are sort of obligatory misfits (the bulimic, the transvestite, the nymphomaniac etc) but they can probably grow beyond their archetypes and will certainly provide some entertaining interaction until then.
On the other hand then, I suppose the biggest grumble is how congested it feels. Loughridge is an excellent colourist and I usually find his choices to be absolutely flawless, so I don’t know if some colour combinations here were his own choice or Laphams. Here characters often tend to be ‘tinged’ with quite muted colours, and then backgrounds appear in solid deep colours or even fluorescents. It seems a little ‘off’, probably because it makes the foreground part (usually the characters themselves) appear a little drab. There has been some wonderful psychedelic coloring over in The Programme recently so I know it can definitely work. I would perhaps have preferred if the interiors were done with colouring techniques similar to the ones employed by Lapham on the cover.
Another fairly common complaint that is kicking around is that Young Liars looks ‘standard Vertigo’ - that it reduces Lapham’s active style into a comparatively ‘busy’ one, which you’d find quite commonly over in Hellblazer and Lucifer. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps if the comic were in black and white, or used coloring sparsely (e.g. Casanova) it would appear a little more experimental. And I must admit the black and white ‘flashbacks’ do have their own charm.
Overall, it’s a good first issue, although whether it’s good enough to survive the hastily threatened ‘Vertigo chopping block’ of recent remains to be seen. It’s got plenty of time to develop a following though, and I’m personally happy to invest in a few more issues to see if it takes flight. As mentioned earlier, I feel the decisive factor in this will be Sadie’s development and progression. She’s probably the one with the most appeal, although she’s also the most problematic to understand emotionally, and quite enigmatic despite her extroverted hedonism. I’m quite taken with the idea that this comic depicts Sadie’s swansong - the story about her life and death. I like carefree characters who have an underlined tragic fate to them. But seeing as Danny claimed it would be about her life and death, we can probably assert it won’t be.
RATING:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vhalf.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/vnone.jpg
Buy Young Liars at X-World, and save! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2972&cat=YOUNG+LIARS)