Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: WORTHY!
Pencils and covers by Tony Harris
Inks by Tom Feister
Colors by JD Mettler.
Volume two of this entertaining and colorful (in many different ways!) graphic novel starts out with a distractingly dead disemboweled dog deep in the dark domain of the subway. Soon denizens of the city begin disporting themselves dressed-out in the same demented demeanor. In addition to this, the weird glyph that's tied to the source of The Great Machine's power starts appearing as graffiti in the subway, turns into anime, and infects a traveler on the subway, causing her to stick a pen in her eye, Orphan Black style!
The featured governmental problem in this edition is Hundred's desire to marry off his close advisor's gay brother which will be a bold challenge to state statute. That goes off, of course, with a hitch - duhh! - but not before we get all kinds of grief about it from all kinds of people including one guy who sneaks a bow and a quiver of arrows into the crowd and attempts to shoot Hundred. He has a freaking bow - why would he not simply get up onto a building roof and shoot from there? This makes no sense! It makes even less sense how he ever got in there! We're told the bow is folding, Hawkeye-style, but the quiver full of arrows sure as hell isn't.
The villain here was a little bit predictable - it's a trope in fiction that when they don't find the body, the 'victim' is still alive. Were it that way in real life, but it's not - it happens pretty much only in fiction. Other than that the story was amusing and inventive, and quite engrossing.
The art work has always been rather simple in this series, which is fine because it does its job, but I have to say there are inconsistencies in character depiction. For example, on around page twenty (the pages are not numbered), Hundred's assistant, named Journal, is depicted as a voluptuous woman reminiscent of Lily Corazon Kwamboka or Josie Goldberg, whereas just 14 or so pages later, she's as willowy as she originally was. I have no idea what's going on there any more than I did with the curiously variable cup size of the reporter, Suzanne's bosom..
Overall, it was a worthy read, once again full of life, humor and the pursuit of weirdos, and I recommend it.
