John
Carpenter's Asylum #4 (Storm King, no cover date. Copyright
2013 even though issue wasn't released until February 12, 2014.)
Writers:
Bruce Jones with Sandy King and Trent Olsen
Artist:
Leonardo Manco
Colorist:
Kinsun Loh
Evil
is real and it is everywhere. Ancient evils, forgotten evils. Why,
even the fate of this very issue was halted by evil. This issue was
scheduled for release the day before Thanksgiving, but was derailed
by Hurricane Haiyan and the resulting health problems with colorist
Kinsun Loh. Then the holidays, which caused the printer and Diamond
Comics Distributors to dally. Then the flipping Polar Vortex, which
snarled many things in America. Finally, finally, I got the
issue in my hands this week. To use an old Alan Moore-ism, no one in
five years' time will care that issue 4 was three months late, they
will only care if issue 4 was good. And it is.
The
battle between good and evil continues to heat up, with Father Leone
seemingly the only one even remotely prepared to do battle with it.
As glimpses of Hell creep into the mind of Father Beckett you can
almost feel the heat, as his possession grows more complete. This
series remains a great read, and I only hope that I won't have to
wait three months until the next issue.
There
is an almost cinematic quality to the framing in many of the scenes
in this issue, courtesy of artist Leonardo Manco. You can almost feel
the whiplash edits and imagine a nanosecond camera angle change,
something all the more impressive when you consider that these are
static images on a page. I really do feel that comic books are the
ultimate storytelling medium. You have the visuals of a movie
combined with the depth of a book. I might be what you would call
biased. Your mileage may vary.
Why
can tiny Storm King sell a comic for $3.99 with heavy duty paper and
an even heavier cover with no advertisements while Marvel and DC sell
comics with cheaper paper (and...shudder...self covers) and the comic
being one third ads for the same price? I know that I'd rather drop
four bucks on this than anything either one are doing these days.
Junk
Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.
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