Review- I AM LEGION

I AM LEGION (Humanoids, 2011 printing; Softcover)

Collects I Am Legion Vols. 1-3 (cover dates June, 2004- November, 2007).

Writer: Fabien Nury

Artist: John Cassady

Nazis. Vampires. The occult. When you combine the Nazis with either one of them, something interesting is bound to happen. When you combine them with both, you get something very interesting. In this case, we have the more supernatural aspect of vampirism in play. Ana is a 10 year girl who can use her vampire powers to make animals and humans slaves. This is obviously appealing to the Nazis. There is also a spy angle which keeps the strange goings on grounded in “reality”. 

I Am Legion is extremely well written, being super dense and text heavy for the first third of the book. There is a lot of dialogue, and it is best to read this in a few sittings than to try and digest it all at once. This is to be savored, not guzzled.

John Cassady is one of the best artists working in comic books today, or any day for that matter. He has an understated style, where people look like people and not hyper-muscled, hyper-sexualized models. I enjoy his panel layouts as well, and they range from a few panels a page to as many as 8 or 9 panels a page. There are very different paces and structure depending on the scene. 

Like all Humanoids books that I've read, this was highly enjoyable and different from my more mainstream American superhero comics. Don't get me wrong, I'm not too cool for superheroes, I'm just enjoying some of the more out there stuff more so these days. I am keeping a close eye on everything that Humanoids releases, and so should the more discerning comic book buyer looking for a change of pace.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4.5 out of 5.

The OCD zone- Another outstanding, high quality presentation from Humanoids Publishing. Super heavy duty coated stock paper coupled with sewn binding equals OCD swoon. The cardstock cover has a coating of decent thickness that will ensure durability with repeated handling. All of this may sound nit-picky to the average bear, but if you are a collected edition obsessive or a connoisseur of well made books, then this stuff is extremely important.

This is a translation of a series of graphic novels originally published in French. I counted four typos in the translation, two of which were words grouped together likethis and another where the word was spaced like thi s. The fourth typo was using AN where A was appropriate. I am not pointing this out to be a prick, but rather in the hopes that this will be corrected in future printings.

Paper rating: 5 out of 5.

Binding rating: 5 out of 5.

Cardstock cover coating rating: 5 out of 5.

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