By: Enrique Carrion (writer), John Upchurch (art) and Rafael Diaz (letters)
The Story: Agent Barrino gets called in to investigate a mystery with WWII ties.
Four Things:
1. Pieces clicking together. – I’ve been a pretty unabashed fan of this series, but the one thing that bugged me was how we seem to have many disconnected story pieces. For example, in issue #1 we learned how Agent Barrino’s girlfriend had been banished to a demonic limbo and he was on a mission to get her back. Well, that plot thread wasn’t fiddled with much over the next several issues as we just watched Barrino solving cases, having sexy time with the ladies and establishing the world of Vescell. So, it was really nice to see the girlfriend plotline come back in this issue. It wasn’t the A-story, but there was enough attention devoted to it that I feel better about the coherence of the whole Vescell story.
2. Love the series of done-in-ones. – The storytelling style employed by Carrion is great. Each issue has a fully resolved major plot (this one relates to a woman who was turned into a vessel for Hitler using a Nazi-era technology) and Carrion uses that A-Story to better establish his world and the characters that live in it. Everything feels fast paced. We’re only five issues into this series and I already feel like I know a LOT about these characters, especially when I compare Vescell to a lot of the Marvel stories that I read where it takes 6 months for anything to happen. You never pick up an issue of Vescell and have to worry too much about remember intricate plot details from the last few issues.
3. Effective and dense art. – Man….is this a densely illustrated book! I think the fewest panels I counted on a page was 7 and I saw one that had FOURTEEN! This means that Upchurch is working really hard to bring us this comic and the denseness allows Carrion to tell more stories per issue than just about any other comic I read. I also think that this denseness is a smart approach because Upchurch is a “good but not great” artist. I think this art might bother me a little bit if I was getting lots of big and bold splash pages, but when you’re looking at lots of little panels…you just read the word balloons and appreciate the sequential storytelling. Honestly, I wish more comics went in this direction because most artists would be better served doing this style than trying (and mostly failing) with splash pages.
4. Unafraid to be sexy. – This title has zero fear when it comes to sex. Sure, it’s juvenile male fantasy to live Agent Barrino’s life where all the women he meets are sexy and they all want to have sex with him. But, just because it is juvenile doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. And, having a sexy woman who has sex with black men (Agent Barrino is a black dude) just to piss off the Hitler persona within her mind is very FUN.
Conclusion: This remains a breath of fresh air in comics. The done-in-one storytelling format is great and the dense storytelling style is allowing Carrion and Upchurch to give us a very meaty story after only five issues.
Grade: B+
-Dean Stell
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