Dark Horse Presents #2 still doesn't quite rise to the level where I'll recommend it to people who don't read comics, but there's a lot of good stuff there. The Concrete story is just wonderfully told (and unlike Bong Dazo, it appears that Chadwick knows how to research locations before he draws them; I've never been to Haleakala Crater but it looks like it was described to me instead of "generic Hawaii landscape"), and Finder is a pretty little self-contained story despite being a "part 2". Number 13: Part 1 and Blood: Part 2, by contrast, both feel like they just drop off at the end without a satisfying narrative arc, which seems particularly odd in Blood's case given that Part 1 worked perfectly well on its own.
I also quite like The Wraith, a silent Batman parody by Patrick Alexander that feels like something by Aragones or Jaffee.
But I'm going to pick on Chaykin a bit here.
Chaykin is a great artist and his work here is subpar; I've come to like Photoshop inking less and less over the years. It doesn't feel as rough as Sanford Green's work later in the book but it's still not up to Chaykin's standards.
The plot's not much better, as it seems half a retread of last month.
But worst of all is the script, which is almost unreadable. Here's the dialogue from page 1:
Anita: I'm telling you, Albert, he's out there.
Albert: And I'm telling you--
Anita: Yeah, yeah, I know...
Anita: ...this is what got me pulled off field assignments in the first place.
Albert: And that condescending tone didn't help either, Anita.
Anita: Fine. None of which gets to the heart of the matter...
Albert: Which is...?
Anita: Which is that there's one bad actor out there...
Anita: ...who's responsible for all these unsolved crimes.
Albert: Your so-called "Perpetrator Zero."
Anita: Your choice of words, not mine.
Albert: Maybe--but you've been flogging this dead horse for two years now...
And it goes on like that for seven more pages.
I don't
know if it's Chaykin or
his letterer who's responsible for that
awful, unreadable mess of
misplaced emphasis, but
for Christ's sake you'd think
that's what editors are for.
Kinda
hope it's the letterer's
fault and not Chaykin's; I
know Chaykin's
more experienced as an artist than a writer, but he's
been in this business
long enough to have picked up the
simple rule that you
read your dialogue out loud to see if it
sounds natural.
