Mystery Society by Steve Niles, Fiona Staples

Rating: WARTY!

This was a graphic novel and it really fell short of the mark. This review is also full of spoilers, so beware. At some points during the reading, I was persuaded to consider it a worthy read, but at other points it made zero sense or was so flat and simplistic that it completely failed to entertain. Add to that the fact that there was no effort to craft a coherent story here and to my overall my feeling that I'm not remotely interested in reading any more in this series, and I'm forced to rate it negatively on balance. This is sad, because the basic idea had potential, and a couple of the characters were interesting. Unfortunately the main characters were a no from the start, and the plot was just silly, period.

The premise is that this young, wealthy, and unhealthily thin couple with the last name of Mystery, are interested in investigating the supernatural and are looking to recruit people to be a part of their investigation team (the Mystery Society). None of this had any background, and no part of the story involved in investigating the supernatural, even though one of their team turned out to be a perfect study subject. When she (a ghoul) joined the team, they showed not the slightest interest in her supernatural aspects! Worse, the couple was diabetes-inducingly sugary, "Darling" each other on every page that it was nauseating.

The story starts with Nick Mystery being taken to jail, yet despite the fact (as we learn later) that he was set up by the government in a huge cover-up and smear campaign, they let him stand there at the prison, and tell his whole story to the press. In what universe would that ever happen? That would be like allowing one of the inmates of Guantanamo to have a TV special to state his case! Read my whips: It's. Not. Going. To. Happen.

So the story he tells is of breaking into area 51 (yawn) to rescue twins who have been kept in suspended animation for decades. He does this single-handedly and without any expenditure of effort whatsoever. Meanwhile back home, metaphorically barefoot and in the kitchen, his wife is interviewing the ghoul with a view to hiring her for their team. So the guy gets all the adventure and the girl is a stay at home not-mom? Why did a female artist even agree to illustrate a story like this? Plus: if Nick is so damned good by himself, why do they even need a team?

Meanwhile, out of the blue, a robot containing the brain of Jules Verne turns up completely out of left field and everyone accepts this story at face value. I am so tired of comics bringing characters from the past into their stories. I guess I should at least credit this one with being someone who was not an American, but still! This happens usually in time-travel stories where the character from the past is always an American of note such as Betty Ross, or George Washington, Jesse James, or Francis Scott Key. It is so tedious to read that crap. So naturally, Jules robot Verne and the ghoul are sent looking for Edgar Allen Poe's skull which has gone missing. Who-the-fuck-cares? Really?

So does the rest of the team then pursue their stated goal of investigating the supernatural? Nope! They're all about breaking back into area 51 to steal the original security vids to clear Nick's name. Which they do again with minimal effort. That's pretty much it. The only interesting characters were the ghoul and the atomic twins. If the story had been only about them, and the other main characters had been omitted completely, this would have made an engaging story, unless of course the twins were rather sexualized as they were in some illustrations. But that failed to materialize and consequently this was a fail for me.

The October Faction Volume 1 by Steve Niles

Title:
Author: Steve Niles
Publisher: IDW
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Damien Worm.

This is another advance review copy of a comic book which arrived without a cover or any material listing the writers, artists, and so on. The first page is the first page of the story. You know I could understand ARC books coming out in the past without a cover if it wasn't ready yet, but there really is no excuse whatsoever in this electronic age for having no cover. Even if the cover art isn't yet done (and I'd have to wonder why, especially for a genre which places great stock in cover art), it's perfectly simple thing to put a blank cover with a note on it explaining the problem.

Normally, I'd also wonder if creators spent less time self-indulgently creating myriad cover variants, they might have one to spare for the actual cover, but in this case, even that doesn't apply since there is no back cover or variant art in the back either! That works for me, but it still doesn't excuse a lack of any sort of cover.

Having said that, the art work was interesting, if tending towards muddy earth tones too much. It used the full page, so no wasted trees here in the print version. It looks almost like it was done in water colors, which was a cool idea - or at least was done in a computerized mimic of water colors. For my taste, though, it was way too dark, and the text, once again, was really hard to read in the iPad in Bluefire Reader.

I think graphic novel creators still think nostalgically in terms of print books and that's a mistake. Reading it in Adobe Digital reader on a 19" monitor, which renders the image roughly the same size as a print comic, still gave some problems but was a lot more legible than the iPad view.

The story felt really hard to get into - and this is volume one! It felt like I came into something in progress, or had started reading volume two by mistake. There was very little given to guide the reader to what was happening or why. The first part of it which started making any sense was page fourteen where "Miss Vivian" comes home from her last day of high school, disgusted with all the frivolous behavior. On that score I can relate to her, and her description of the events as a "selfie apocalypse" was funny to me. She's so disillusioned with school hat she flatly refuses to go to the graduations ceremony.

The large house in which she lives - with a servant yet! - is reputed to be haunted. The dark deep-hued coloring now seemed to work a lot better. I like the way the artist brought reds into it, suggestive of blood, perhaps? Vivian's brother Geoff has finally managed to trap a spirit - in the closet! It's bound magically, so Vivian gets to open the closet door to see it, which was amusing. Shades of Harry Potter in the dark Arts class in Prisoner of Azkaban. They plan on letting it go. I'm not sure I would, given how the spirit looks, but this is just a proof of concept thing for them. They have some deal going for which they need their father's approval, and Geoff now believes they can get it, given his success here.

That part was winning back my favor, but then we abruptly quit the story for a few pages to go off elsewhere and I was lost again, and just beginning to become annoyed when we switched right back to Geoff and Vivian and the arrival of their father. I'm getting whiplash here! The demon which is supposedly trapped attacks their father and the only way they can scare it off is to show it its own reflection in a hand mirror, which causes it to flee, but Geoff and Vivian think their father's behavior is weird, not the fact that they had a pet demon! That was funny.

So, a bunch of mixed feelings about this, especially towards the negative need of the spectrum when I began it, but I grew increasingly favorable towards it as I read through it. This felt like an extended prologue more than anything else and I despise prologue sin regular novels. This one did introduce us to the family, but we learned very little about them and what's going on in their world. Volume two needs to come through with a lot more solid explanation about exactly what this world is and how it works. That said, I feel fine rating this as a worthy read with the caveats I've mentioned borne firmly in mind.