I
have reviewed a few of IDW’s KISS comics in the past, giving both glowing and
terrible reviews to the issues. I was
intrigued by this new release as the series that started out in a promising way
nearly a year ago, ended with quite the thud, and Mars Attacks KISS was a
disaster. I hoped that a new series
focusing on the individual members in their own issues might help writer Chris
Ryall flex his muscle and do an introspective journey into each character
without giving them such a high stakes assignment like saving the world. In essence, this could hopefully get the characters
back to being an interesting group of characters for the launch of whatever
series comes next. Let’s see how they
did.
Cover:
I’m
not going to lie, one of the main things that drew me in to this title in
particular is the inclusion of Angel Medina.
I know that there have been KISS comics before and since, but Medina’s
run as penciller on the KISS: Psycho Circus comics from Image in the 90’s
cement his status in my mind as the definitive KISS artist in comics. He has a dynamic drawing ability that I loved
on his Warlock and the Infinity Watch stuff for Marvel but that really came
through when he was allowed to cut loose at Image. I hoped that by including him in this
project, it could bring back some of the mojo that made those Psycho Circus
comics some of the most interesting and impressive in the long history
(KISStory?) of KISS comics. Not only was
Medina the artist on this first issue focusing on The Demon (the Gene Simmons
persona) but he also did the covers for all four issues.
This
cover has all of the same magic that the Psycho Circus comics carried. The only thing that is any different in fact
is that the comic takes place in the city as opposed to the more urban settings
of Psycho Circus (it was in a circus after all). Combine a dynamic pose with an insane amount
of detail on The Demon’s armor (a Medina hallmark) as well as a well drawn city
in the background and you get a classic cover.
It’s like a Spiderman or Batman cover mixed with Spawn (which Medina
also penciled for a while). This takes
me back to the 90’s in a good way, not in the kind of way that seeing a
character with too many pockets and chronically obscured feet does.
10/10 – Maybe I’m a sucker for seeing one of my
favorite artists from my youth returning to one of my favorite properties from
my youth, but I thoroughly enjoyed this cover.
Story:
Chris
Ryall has been hit or miss with the KISS property in my opinion. I know that he is also the editor in chief at
IDW, so anything negative I say could and probably would hold him back from
giving me any kind of work on two properties (KISS and Transformers) that I
would love to have a hand in. That being
said, and I am being totally genuine here, this issue is a huge step up from where
the series left off. As I suspected,
exploring the characters one on one is a lot more effective than just throwing
them out there in a “let’s save the world” scenario. I will say, having an appearance by the four
horsemen of the apocalypse seemed like it was shoehorned in to take advantage
of Medina’s design skills and his ability to draw action sequences. There is not much gleaned from that that
could not have been done in a different, less formulaic way (unless of course
this leads to a bigger, over-arching plot point to draw the four issues
together). The fact that The Demon gives
us a running commentary about how he is beating the horsemen is nice and brings
me back to a more 90’s style comic, where exposition of this nature was the
norm. I know that a lot of people don’t
like it nowadays, their big argument being that there is no way that that much
dialogue can be generated in the time to perform the action depicted on the
page. To this I say: you’re reading a
comic book. Settle down, have a beverage
and quit finding fault in something that was industry standard before there was
an industry.
That
being said, this is not nearly as dialogue heavy as you would think. It definitely gives Medina’s art room to
breathe and flow throughout the page.
Knowing that Medina is the main draw here, Ryall does a great job of
crafting a story that fits his strengths (even though it doesn’t really work
exceptionally well as a story on its own, as a vehicle it is great). It is full of fighting and opportunities to
provide dynamic poses of The Demon and those that he is fighting against. As always, Ryall works in some classic KISS
easter eggs for us diehard fans, using song titles at key points in the story
as a shout out to the roots of the series.
The best part is that Ryall knows what songs are “Gene” songs and makes
sure to use those. I hope that he
continues that tradition in the later issues and with the same kind of
knowledge and care that he did here.
6/10 – It’s no Psycho Circus, but what is at this
point? This definitely had a similar
feel to those stories though (and I’m sure a lot of that had to do with Medina)
and Ryall did a good job of letting the art be the highlight here and giving at
a vehicle to do so. There are a couple
good parts but nothing that really jumps out at me. Definitely one of the better issues in the
IDW series though.
Art:
It’s
Angel Medina! On KISS! What’s not to love!?
Ok,
there’s a couple things that I can mention that stood out to me in a negative
way. Every page is made up of inset
panels (much like in last week’s review) and while this is not nearly as
confusing for this issue (mainly because the colorist – Romulo Fajardo – does a
better job of differentiating the panels with color, it is still something that
I skewered the artist for last week, so as much as I love Medina’s work I can’t
let him skate by on that. There’s an
incredible amount of movement and detail in each of the panels so that is a
positive, plus the fact that Fajardo does an excellent job of coloring straight
from Medina’s pencils.
The
four horsemen themselves are not very unique in their appearance either. War (as a woman in this iteration which is
interesting to see) looks like a Starfire knock-off, Famine looks like a
differently-colored Darkseid with some odd prosthesis while Pestilence and
Death look like characters in an obscure Japanese fighting video game. The amount of detail is great but Medina’s
overall character designs for these four is just not up to par with what I
would expect. Medina does do a
remarkable job of storytelling though and actually keeps everything clear while
still making it intensely detailed.
7/10 – A solid effort by one of the better artists
out there that deserves more work than he’s getting. There’s got to be a horror property for Dark
Horse or something that he can work on!
Overall: 7/10
– I have no idea what to expect from the other issues in the “solo” series, but
this one was not bad. I hope that Ryall
can build on how much better this one was written than the previous issues in
subsequent series starring these characters.
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