Comic Review: The Hollows #7

            My main concern with picking up The Hollows by Chris Ryall and Sam Kieth is that I would like it too much and would therefore be roped into another $4 comic every month.  Let’s see how all worked out.

Cover:

            The cover is interesting, even though it is a little plain.  The artwork is very cool, showing a nice sketchiness as well as some well placed shadows and color.  The three characters on the cover do look a little out of place though, as if they were all pasted on there together.  It could be that the girl and the little pink creature do not have the same monotone sepia look to them that makes this seem a bit strange, but I’m not sure.  The logo is interesting and just easy enough to read where all of the extra noise around the letters looks like a decent design as opposed to a mess.  The fact that the W seems to be resting on the guy’s head is unfortunate but not overly distracting unless you are looking at it with a critical eye. 

            The overall design on the cover does a decent job of moving your eye to the upper right quadrant where the guy’s face is.  Luckily Keith uses a good page design here as the face definitely has nothing specific about it that draws your attention to it on its own.  Hell, his giant belt has more contrast than his face does.

3/10 – Lineup covers don’t really do it for me, regardless of how nice the illustration looks.  So far, my $4 is safe.

Story:

            I like post-apocalyptic stories.  Really, I do.  I enjoy seeing what writers and artists envision for the future and how the scarred landscape can become a character unto itself.  This seems to be another post-apocalyptic story; however we are not really given any info as to when it takes place.  In fact we are not given much info at all.  We know that it takes place in Japan, and that society now lives in cities that are built onto man-made giant trees in order to keep them from the toxic gases that are on the ground below.  And if those gases don’t get you, the soul sucking zombies will.  They live down below as well.  Being that the cities are all on the sides of the trees (think those big platform-like mushrooms you see on the sides of trees) people apparently get around via jetpack, except for our “hero” Craig, who has crafted himself a pair of wings. 

            Upon using his wings to fly (on his way to the store to pick up some diapers, which is a nice way to ground the story in reality a little at least) he runs into one of the trees while checking out a group of people being devoured by the zombies.  I realize that he was probably distracted by the carnage below, but you’re telling me he didn’t see the giant man-made tree that is large enough to build multiple cities upon? 

            Okay, ridiculous plot device aside, we are then introduced to the people that live inside the trees.  I assume this “the hollows” that the title references, but nothing is ever explained about how those people can live inside the trees at ground level without getting sick.  Even Craig makes reference to it but nothing is explained.  I assume that it will be explained eventually though (at least I hope).  At the end of the comic, Craig just jumps off a building and flies away, presumably back to his life.  There is no reference made to jet propulsion or even that the wings are powered by anything more than Craig flapping his arms.  I find the logic to be pretty hard to believe then that a full grown man could flap his arms enough to lift himself off the ground.

2/10 – Nothing was really explained here.  Nothing at all.  I have no idea where this comic will go from here as there is no real conflict outlined, and honestly nothing to keep me interested.  This issue is titled “Chapter One” which makes me think that maybe it should have been put out as a collection instead of serialized.  My $4 is so very safe and snug right now.

Art:

            While I am not a huge collector of everything Sam Kieth, I know who he is and I have seen some of his more mainstream work in the past.  I was therefore a little excited to see what he does here when he is let loose from the restrictions of “corporate comics”.  What we get is incredibly loose and free-flowing.  This works great in certain areas, while in others it feels almost like a sketchbook.  This can be ok, but often it feels unfinished or just plain glossed over.  I do like the fact that Kieth did everything art-wise here, pencils, whatever inks there are and the colors.  Looking at the output it’s absolutely necessary for that to happen though as I would be completely lost if I was a colorist brought in on this from the outside. 

It's amazing how we can go from pages like these that look completely mailed in...

To this, that is a beautiful illustration.

This is also an incredibly creepy page (at least the top panel, then it devolves as we move further down). 

 4/10 – While the art is good, it looks too much like I’m just looking at a Sam Kieth sketchbook with these characters as opposed to a comic.

Overall:  3/10 – This is not what I expected, but thankfully I will not have to worry about an additional comic coming to my pull list.