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Virgin Comics Update
Posted 14 Aug 2007
Writer: Saurav Mohopatra, Zeb Wells, Andy Diggle, Mike Carey
Artist: Satish Tayade, Abhishek Singh, Edison George/Siddarth Kotian...
Publisher: Virgin Comics
4.50 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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India Authentic #1-3 (Ganesha; Kali; Indra)
Writer: Saurav Mohopatra
Artist: Satish Tayade, Abhishek Singh
Colorist: M. Vishwanathan/S. M. Bhaskar/R. C. Prakash; Singh; Tayade
Publisher: Virgin Comics
5 out of 5 stars
Devi #11 & 12
Writer: Saurav Mohopatra
Artist: Edison George/Siddharth Kotian/Saumin Patel
Colorist: R. Gavaskar/Patel/N. Sivakami & M. Vishwanathan
Publisher: Virgin Comics
2.5 out of 5 stars
Snake Woman #0
Writer: Zeb Wells
Artist: Michael Gaydos
Colorist: I. Jeyabalan & A. Selvan
Publisher: Virgin Comics
5 out of 5 stars
Snake Woman: Tale of the Snake Charmer #1
Writer: Zeb Wells
Artist: Vivek Shinde
Colorist: I. Jeyabalan
Publisher: Virgin Comics
4.5 out of 5 stars
Gamekeeper #3
Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist: Mukesh Singh
Colorist: Mukesh Singh
Publisher: Virgin Comics
5 out of 5 stars
Voodoo Child #1
Writer: Mike Carey
Artist: Dean Ruben Hyrapiet
Colorist: S. Sundarakannan
Publisher: Virgin Comics
4.5 out of 5 stars
There’s good news and bad news from the most interesting new
publisher in years, as a few fixes are made to what wasn’t broke
and several younger series debut with the same freshness and
confidence that pushed the mainstream-indie envelope and propelled the
earlier books through a remarkable first year.
“Wisely judged in need of no makeover is the Snake Woman
series, which has retained its full creative team and is moving into
ever more fascinating territory.”
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True mythic wonder to surpass any mortal special effects is packed
into the one-issue stories of the recently-started India
Authentic series. These spotlight one deity per issue in a kind of
Secret Origins for the living spirits of Hinduism, aspiring to
give readers the straight story of forces and personas that are
elaborated on for modern fictional purposes in many of Virgin’s
other books. Though this one’s a kind of primer on a religious
belief, the lore of India is readymade for the sword-and-sorcery
sensibility, and the atmospheric, mystical art well conveys
otherworldly figures in dreamlike landscapes. The biggest surprise is
the way the tales are personalized, usually through narration by
witnesses whose identity or role remains a surprise until the end and
puts a poignant human-interest spin on the clashes of titans the books
mostly concern. It’s a big pantheon, so India Authentic
has as promising a future as it has a rich mythic history to draw on.
The modern goddess epic Devi has strayed a bit from its own
legacy of late. New editor Ron Marz, a great writer on his own sci-fi
adventure series, seems to have been the wrong choice to second-guess
this material. The intriguingly mixed motivations of the characters
have been replaced with soap-opera backstories and stock
nobility-vs.-vengeance soul-searching, making what had been a dense
but never confusing spiritual saga into a somewhat flimsy superhero
conflict. This was a book for fans of Promethea or the J. M.
DeMatteis Spectre and was not necessarily made to move
blockbuster numbers; turning it into Wonder Woman or
Witchblade was the wrong move and Virgin should have settled
for the prestige.
The supernatural thriller The Sadhu and the adrenalized
political allegory Ramayan 3392 A.D. have always been as
high-energy as they are high-minded, so they may fare much better
under Marz’s direction, though those reboots were not available
at press time.
Wisely judged in need of no makeover is the Snake Woman
series, which has retained its full creative team and is moving into
ever more fascinating territory. The special number-zero series
prelude retold (and expanded) the story from the perspective of the
reptile-goddess whose spirit moves through the title character. This
presence was smartly felt more than shown, in an ambient narration
that conjured the creepy, lurking presence of the serpents of Eden and
other lore (and of our own reptile brain and literally twisted DNA,
connections that were deftly made in this expansively imagined modern
fable). The Tale of the Snake Charmer miniseries moves the
story in more of its always unpredictable directions, be it a new
locale across the globe or lines of unexpected alliance and even
redemption in the grim saga of an immortal grudge between goddesses
and men. There are a few missteps, like #0’s unconvincing text
appendices or the mini’s sometimes rudimentary art, but a
compelling storyline keeps everything in the service of solid
entertainment.
Both the Snake Woman books and Gamekeeper are about
feral protagonists uneasily navigating a world whose technological
advancements can confound them but whose barbarity can ironically way
surpass them. Gamekeeper, only into its third issue as of this
writing, remains another must-read for its groundbreaking painted art
and its suspenseful odyssey of a displaced and deadly Chechen refugee
uncovering a global plot whose mysteries we only grasp as he does. The
imprint’s newest entry, Voodoo Child (a much more clever
title than the previously-announced Enigma), joins
Gamekeeper and a number of other books Virgin has put out in
processing the sins of politics past and present as a kind of
recurring nightmare that takes a literal horror-movie form — in this
case, a zombie avenger of slavery now loose in the class-war wasteland
of post-Katrina New Orleans.
It sounds exploitative, but in the conception of comic-geek
megastar Nic Cage and his son Weston and the handling of prestige
writer Mike Carey and somber artist Dean Ruben Hyrapiet, the title
character is a towering figure of divine retribution casting a long
shadow of guilt over the human race’s crimes. Hyrapiet’s
murky, ornate style is great for conjuring active shadows and ominous
locales, Carey’s ear for the everyday speech and the mystic
incantation of three centuries is alert and absorbing, and the device
of an extended origin narrative that’s all-too-common in many
current comics is employed to build suspense effectively here, with
every character but the mysterious star getting more fully introduced
in the first issue. This gradual reveal is familiar from horror
stories, but in a cast of cynical cops and scummy profiteers the
source of all the scariness in this case may turn out to be the most
morally justified character among them. This is storytelling that
draws you in with ghouls that are involving to watch and gets under
your skin with monstrosities that aren’t so easily escaped.
In the case of material as superior as Virgin specializes in,
change is not always good — but almost all of the company’s line
continues to change the comics medium for the better.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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