10
Written by Keith Giffen and Drawn by Andy Kuhn
Published by Boom Studios

Keith Giffen. A twisted plot. Loads of ultraviolence. So why does 10 add up to only about a seven?

Graham Meachum comes home from a foreign vacation to a nasty surprise: he has been mysteriously and randomly selected to be forced to play in a live HUNTER/SEEKER competition, wherein the players must kill one another in order to survive. The game lasts ten days, and if there is no winner, the instructions he has been given say that the game’s “masters” will do the killing instead. As you might imagine, this presents a number of problems.

One, Graham doesn’t believe any of what he reads for a second. Surely no such thing could exist, right? Two, you’d think that going around and killing people would attract a lot of law enforcement attention. But the biggest hurdle might just be that he has come home from his vacation on the tenth and final day of the contest, and the meanest and nastiest participant is on his way to Graham’s door.

Again, conceptually, this grabs you. Mixing 100 BULLETS with BATTLE ROYALE makes for a clever idea, and I’m down with it. But problems exist in the execution that make it difficult to throw your full enjoyment behind the book.

For one, the contestants being “randomly chosen” doesn’t quite wash, because one of the other people stuck in the game is Graham’s ex-girlfriend Maggie. I know it adds an emotional hook to what Graham’s going through, but it reads like a violation of the story’s foundation. For another, the actions taken by the primary “bad guy” throughout the story don’t quite hold up, either. If that was the way he anticipated the game playing out, there was no reason to do any number of other things through the course of the story. It just feels troubling.

What works? Graham. Giffen creates a very real portrait of a man whose world is sent straight into insanity in the space of about thirty minutes, and not for a minute do we ever have trouble getting behind him as a protagonist. Graham is us, he reacts the way we would, and his ultimate fate is the one that would terrify anyone the most. And Andy Kuhn’s art is terrific, bringing a nice dose of humanity to the bloodshed.

10 is lightweight entertainment that admittedly doesn’t aim much beyond that. There’s no commentary on the human condition or moral to be found. That’s fine. But I can’t shake the feeling that there was room to really take this concept a step or two up a notch by addressing some of the critical issues within the story.

SIBAM?

We’ve seen very similar scenarios in other films, so my guess is that this is likely one that would struggle to make it to the screen. The aforementioned BATTLE ROYALE is one, but my mind drifts to the indy flick SERIES 7, which turned the concept into a reality TV show. That doesn’t preclude Giffen and Kuhn producing a comic sequel that might take the idea into new territory, however. Then we might re-visit 10’s fortunes again down the road.

ONE PAGE FILLER MAN
Written and Drawn by Jim Mahfood
Published by Image Comics

Maybe it was just my week to be a little disappointed. I mean, I love Jim Mahfood’s work. Been following his stuff for years. I think he has one of the sharpest satiric minds working in comics today. But part of what makes him effective is that he is a quick puncher; one or two jabs and he backs away, satisfied with a job well done. But with this book, stretching one of his thinnest concepts out to over a hundred pages, he runs into problems. The characters have, in previous appearances, been on screen for two-four pages at a time, which masks their silliness and such. But there’s no way to hide that there’s no real concept or point of view at their core here, because they’re exposed, and exposed at a snail’s pace to boot. I really struggled with it.

Much better is the back material, which reprints the previous short appearance of the characters, and those cartoons shine. They remind you of just how sly and entertaining Mahfood can be and put the happy spot back in your heart after getting through the longer front story.

WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME IF I WET THE BED?
Written and Drawn by Liz Prince
Published by Top Shelf

Reading this charming collection of autobiographical cartoons by Prince, it would be easy for someone to compare her work to a Jeffrey Brown, but I don’t think that’d be quite fair. For one, I’m on record for not really liking Brown’s work, and I happened to really enjoy Prince’s. Her easy wit and honesty in presenting how she and the love of her life Kevin deal with one another has such a quiet truth to it that I was totally sucked in from the first page. She somehow captures the banalities of everyday existence and turns them into ultimate romantic moments. WET is one woman’s valentine to a brave guy. It’s nifty.

ROBOTIKA #1
Written and Drawn by Alex Sheikman
Published by Archaia Studios Press

Sheikman’s futuristic tale of cyborg ninjas and A.I. macguffins looks very pretty and has plenty of action, but it’s hard to say whether or not there will be a lot here in the long run. The Queen summons her finest bodyguard, Niko, to retrieve a stolen invention that could lead to war, which is a pretty classic setup for a samurai film. Niko hits the road, fights a battle, meets a warrior woman along with way… nothing you haven’t seen and heard before. So the execution through the last three issues is going to be key; will this crack any new ground? This reads pleasantly enough, with only one real flaw: one character’s word balloons read vertically, and it’s unbelievably obnoxious. I think this can pay off, but only time will tell.

LOCAL #2
Written by Brian Wood and Drawn by Ryan Kelly
Published by Oni Press

I liked issue one of this series okay, but I wasn’t as hot for it as many others were. Ultimately, the way Wood allowed Megan’s dilemma to play itself out in three different ways was confusing and sort of unsatisfying. Issue two is a huge leap forward, giving us a much richer and more interesting tale. Megan is now living in Minneapolis, and while she is gone during the day, a strange guy has been going into her apartment and taking Polaroids of himself (clean ones) and writing her notes. It has developed into a full-fledged correspondence at this point, but they have yet to meet, instead carrying out a somewhat twisted “long distance” relationship. While the circumstances are beyond odd, every beat feels just right, and you believe that these two people would engage in this off-kilter and possibly destructive behavior. LOCAL is really turning into something interesting.

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

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