Comic Review – Vitriol The Hunter #1

            First, a mini-rant:

            I walked into my comic shop today, and it was like I was transported back in time to 1992.  Someone at DC Comics had dusted off their flux capacitor and decided that Justice League of America needed not one, not two, not three, but fifty-two variant covers.  Okay, DC, you guys are idiots, and your marketing department should be forced to physically consume the leftover copies of this stupidity.  When I first heard the news of the variant covers I thought it was dumb, but now that I see them in person I realize just how ridiculous they are.  Here is the thing, my comic shop, and I’m assuming any other shop of a similar size or larger, moved comics out of the way so that an entire shelf could be devoted to these covers.  I have never worked in retail, but I know how important shelf space is, and the fact that regular inventory was moved to make room for God knows how many copies of one comic is just stupid.  They are all the same damn thing just with a different cover (and not even a markedly different cover, just a different flag cut and pasted in photoshop)! 

            Not only that, but I went into the shop yesterday in a pretty decent mood.  My pull list was pretty light but there is one thing that really got me excited, the newest Goon trade was out!  I was going to be able to follow along with Goon and Franky while they did whatever it was they were going to do.  Did that happen?  Nope.  No Goon.  I am hoping against hope it was just an oversight and not because the entire comic budget for the shop was spent on 150 copies of the newest superhero garbage from DC. 

            Anyway, on to this week’s review: Vitriol The Hunter #1.

Cover:

            It’s a first issue, so the montage cover actually works pretty well here.  The cover was drawn by the interior artist so that is a major plus as well because what you see artistically is what you get throughout (I’ll go into that more in depth in the art section of the review).  The cover itself fits the subject matter very well in terms of the tone that it sets forth.  The best part about it is the fact that they didn’t try to put any color or tone in the actual title itself.  The cover itself is so dark with its predominantly purple and blue hues that anything but white would have blended too much into the background.  The title itself is clear and easy to read.  It doesn’t interfere with the art and just sits there, doing its job as it is supposed to.

            The art does a decent job of telling me who the good guys and bad guys are.  At least the vampires don’t sparkle.

5/10 – A middle of the road cover.  The title is good but the art itself doesn’t really do anything else that stands out.

Story:

            I really want to read a good vampire story to reclaim the genre from the Twilight kids.  I was hoping that this was going to be one that brings the characters of vampires back to being scary and sinister and not caricatures.  The vampires themselves are okay, a little cheesy but not terrible representations.  They are a bit stereotypical of the kind of vampires we would see before vampires had “feelings” or whatever has happened to them of late.  The whole secret society thing can be done well and it’s nice that writers Billy Martin and Brent Allen have given them specific idiosyncrasies that they have expanded upon in footnotes.  This helps to make the vampires more their own creations as opposed to just copies of something they saw in a Wesley Snipes movie. 

            That all goes away when one of the vampires is named Korbius though.  Really?  Korbius?  As in Morbius from Marvel comics but with a “K”?  Wow.  That is within the first few pages and it is easy to see that this comic goes from a reclamation project for the vampire genre to pretty damn formulaic in a hurry.  The way that the vampires talk, especially big boss vampire is very clichéd and offers nothing fresh.  From there it gets worse because we are introduced to the main character and he is automatically shoved down our throats as some kind of bad-ass (with no pupils, not really sure what that’s about).  He’s a take no prisoners kind of guy that, after he is injured, gets patched up by a girl that will either become his girlfriend or his damsel in distress (or both) before all is said and done.  Of course her father used to do the same thing for him, and of course there is some kind of magical pill that he takes to help him.

            If you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of “of course that happened” kind of moments in this.

            We then move to fight scene where the vampires are attacking some cops that look to be dressed in the kinds of uniforms you usually associate with German or Soviet troops circa 1945.  Surprise surprise, these troops are getting massacred until Vitriol shows up and saves the day.  We then get treated to a montage of Vitriol fighting the vampires and…meh.  It’s just boring and uninspiring.  The fight ends and we get more quips and shots of Vitriol that are supposed to make us think he is cool or a badass, but all I am reminded of is Carson Daly.  Someone that really wants to and really tries to be cool but is just a tool.  Oh, and of course we are introduced to some kind of magic serum that creates werewolves (which they call Lycans here because of course they do) and find out that that is what the vampire horde was after the whole time. 

1/10 – The story is full of coincidences and “of course that happened” moments.  Nothing feels original, and the extra effort to make Vitriol into some kind of bad ass that doesn’t respect authority etc. etc. is just sad.  How did this comic ever get green-lit?

Art:

            It’s obvious that Billy Martin is a fan of Humberto Ramos.  In fact he may be trying a little too hard to be Ramos as I am pretty sure there is at least one panel that I remember from Ramos’s work in the past (I think it’s from Crimson but not too sure).  That’s the thing, this book is just trying too hard to be Crimson, and it’s not doing a good job of it.  Art-wise, the perspective and the anatomy is way off and not in an exaggerated style like we would normally see from someone like Ramos, but in a WTF kind of style where the artist just obviously screwed it up.  Heads and limbs don’t look like they rest on the characters in the right places and the one girl in the whole comic is drawn like she has no internal organs (or lower ribs for that matter).  A decent job is done in terms of drawing backgrounds and establishing where things are taking place, but that doesn’t save the art when it is supposed to be relatively action oriented. 

Two shining examples of heads that just don't seem to be connected to the bodies that they are on.  And why is Vitriol standing like that while shooting someone?  That's not natural at all.

That middle panel looks off in terms of the perspective of the window.  If that was accurate the vampire would have to be practically laying down.  A good idea but with poor execution.

How many organs did she have removed so she could get her waist that small?  And the panel all the way to the right, her hand should be moved to his other shoulder because there is no way she should be able to be turned the way she is turned but still position her arm that far back.

No wonder they can't defeat the vampires, this gut doesn't even watch where he's shooting.

I have seen the face in the inset panel before.  Plus you have the exclamation of Vitriol's name after the text that it's supposed to precede.  Piss poor job of layout.

I have seen this exact panel in a Ramos comic before (I think it was Crimson).  This looks like it was poorly lightboxed from that comic.

Stuff like this is supposed to make him sound bad-ass but just makes him sound like a douche.

You are holding what is presumably a glass vial of something that changes people into werewolves, or something like that.  Why would you be squeezing it like that?  It looks like he's beating off, not holding a delicate, possibly earth shattering find.

2/10 – It’s almost as if Billy Martin sat down with a complete collection of Crimson and just made a fan comic of it, a pretty poorly done one at that.  Again, how does something like this get green-lit?  Is it because people will hopefully look at the cover and see a Ramos style and vampires and get duped into thinking it’s Crimson 2.0?

Overall: 2/10 – This was just not a good comic all around.  The story was formulaic and forced and the art lacked basic drawing skills, instead preferring to ape a style that took years to perfect all of the little things that make it stand out.  The coloring is good but if I wanted to buy a comic strictly for the coloring I would seek out the colorist’s portfolio.  It just leaves me very disappointed.