By: Richard Starkings (writer), Axel Medellin (art) & Gregory Wright (colors)
The Story: Someone is interested in reactivating the Elephantmen.
What’s Good: Elephantmen is always a very pretty comic book, but it has had a bit of a revolving door on art duties for the last 12 issues or so, so it very nice that the title welcomes Axel Medellin to art duties. Unlike a few recent artists on this series, he captures dark and dirty Ladronn/Moritat look of how this series is “supposed” to feel. Medellin is touted as a new “regular” artist for this series and it can only be hoped that future issues look as nice as this one does.
From a story standpoint, after months of noodling around the issue, this issue reveals that the bad dudes behind the efforts to reactivate the elephantment are, in fact, former Mappo scientists. This bodes ill for our band of protagonists and makes it appear that just as they are getting their lives in order, they may never be truly free of the bloody missions for which they were created. Elephantmen is at its best when exploring the humanity of our half-human characters and it would appear that we will be heaping doses of that in future months.
Richard Starkings always puts out a very professionally done comic and this issue is no exception. A good bit of advice for creators making their first comics would be to look at Elephantmen for how to succeed on the “little stuff”: nice cover, good printing, excellent lettering, footnotes referring the reader to events in earlier issues, etc. Woody Allen said that “80% of success is just showing up” and something similar could be said about just nailing the easy stuff on a comic book that many creators and big publishers fumble the ball on.
What’s Not So Good: It would be nice if the story in Elephantmen was moving along a bit faster. Between the expected publication delays on a creator-owned title and some decompressed storytelling, it seems that this “evil forces are trying to reactivate the elephantmen” has not only been building for a long time, but it has been stuck at the same level of tension for a long time. Let’s get on with it or it will begin to make more sense to just wait for the trade on this title.
Conclusion: Good, but I’m ready to move to the conclusion of this story arc.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell
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