Sunstone Vol 4 by Stjepan Šejić

Rating: WARTY!

I really have very little to say about this! I got both volumes 3 & 4 from the library at the same time, thinking they might be interesting but after I read volume 3 I was so disappointed that I had no real interest in reading this one. In the end, I skimmed the whole thing stopping here and there to read a section, and it was just as uninteresting as the earlier volume.

The art was great as before, although as before the female characters were all the same character with different hair and clothes! There was at least one character of color I noticed, so that was a minor improvement, but the 'story' was simply the same thing over again - shallow, one-note, and uninteresting with the author relying entirely on the sexual and the kinky to focus the reader's interest, and it failed in my case.

I'm not the kind of person who finds a negligée on a store mannequin remotely interesting. Put it on a woman in whom I have no vested interest, and I might find it mildly distracting, but put it on a woman I already find fascinating and who might merely be a choice voice in an audiobook, and it's a different story. The same thing applies here. I need a story. I need to be interested in the women. Putting leather on them doesn't make me interested. Shallowness turns me off. This novel was far too larded with both, and all this author could offer was a gossamer fabric with no body of work underneath it. It's nowhere near enough!

As I mentioned in my review of volume three, this was such a disappointment because I had loved Šejić's work in a volume of Death Vigil and a volume of Rat Queens both of which I reviewed favorably here. I cannot offer the same for this.

Sunstone Vol 3 by Stjepan Šejić

Rating: WARTY!

I picked this up on spec from the local library because it looked interesting and the artwork was awesome, but on closer inspection - and reading - it turned out to be much ado about doting, and BDSM came to mean Boring Detail, Sapping Mindfulness. I wasn't impressed at all. This was a disappointment because I loved Šejić's work on a volume of Death Vigil and a volume of Rat Queens both of which I reviewed favorably here.

I have not read either of the first two of this five volume set, so I can't speak to how those were or what kind of lead-in they were to these two volumes. I can say that this story was not interesting. I think the author is far more in love with the idea of portraying women in kinky clothing than ever he was in telling a story of two lesbian women who happened to share an interest in Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission (or sado-masochism if it's okay with you, Mistress Acronym).

The artwork was gorgeous and several leagues ahead of the all-too-common comic book flat color, flat image style. It was nuanced and shaded and had a lot of character, but ironically, having used that word, the big problem was that every single female character looked exactly the same! They were all thin lipped, long nosed, and lithe, willowy and skinny. In contrast the guys depicted in the story (although few and far between), had at least some characteristics to differentiate them, although all of them seemed to sport facial hair. This did make a refreshing change from most other comic books where precious few guys have facial hair, but it was taking the pendulum too far in the opposite direction! Worse, there were absolutely no people of color present whatsoever.

The biggest problem with this volume though, was the complete lack of a story. There's a thing known as the Bechdel-Wallace-Woolf test wherein a story, film, or show is said to fail unless it features at least a couple of women (preferably named characters) who talk to each other about something other than guys. I think there should be a similar test about stories where characters seem to have a problem talking to each other about anything that's not the core topic - in this case BDSM. It should include a component about the level of obsession with the core topic, too.

The two main women in this story were almost tunnel-vision, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else - on the topic in question. In short, they were simply not realistic to say nothing of a total failure in the rounded and interesting people department. Though an outside life was hinted at (one was supposed to be a writer, the other a lawyer, yet none of this was actually depicted), they actually had no life at all outside of their sexual interludes! Worse, they failed to treat even those interactions like they were actually a real part of their lives. Instead, they were disproportionately excited, surprised, drooling and wanting, to a level that was simply idiotic. It made it all fake and far more like cheap pornography than erotica.

In the end this story was not at all about how they were falling in love and building a relationship, but about how much the author-artist loved to draw shallow characters in leather and latex. The problem was that this was all the story was about. This was so clearly a guy's take on this topic that it failed to entertain or engross me at all. I don't mind reading about people's quirks and kinks, whether or a sexual or of any other nature, but when that's all the writer has to offer and there's really no actual story in sight, it's tiresome. I cannot recommend this one at all.

Death Vigil Volume 1 by Stjepan Šejić

Rating: WORTHY!

I loved Stjepan Šejić's Rat Queens, not so hot on his Dresden Files, but this particular series was another win for him in my book - or for me with his book, I guess. After reading two less-than-appealing graphic novels prior to this one, it was a breath of fresh air to encounter the sotry and artwork here. It wasn't all plain sailing, but overall, this was a very worthy read.

It's a great life in the Vigil. The only drawback is you have to be dead - and then get invited to join because of some special quality you possess. Oh, and you must accept that your hair color will change to white. But not your skin color. I didn't get the distinction there. The evil dudes have, of course black hair, but not necessary black skin - because that would be racist, right?!

Once you're in, though, you get a weapon, and a cool bunch of fun friends. On the downside, you have to fight horrific demonic beasties which try to break through from the abyss into the upper layers. The beasts were sadly clichéd, I'm afraid to report - all scarlet and teeth. The death vigil crew, and indeed the bad guys, all curiously shared the same face - with a change of hair style here and there, and maybe some facial hair or a slightly more square jaw if it was a guy. Sometimes it was hard for me to tell the difference between once character and another from their image, although they all had different personalities. Indeed, when the hair color unexpectedly changes on one of the good guys, she became pretty much a twin of one of the girls on the evil side. I don't think that this was intentional, but who knows - the series isn't over yet!

There's the superficial plot - cracks develop in the barrier, evil beasts break through and the Death Vigil dispatches them, calling in help from their powerful female leader if they get into trouble - and an underlying story arc, and it worked well on both levels. That was what was commendable and different about this series - the guys were not in charge here. This is a very female-centric series, with both good guys and bad guys having a strong female figure calling the shots. On the good side, there was more than one interesting female character: try five!

Bernie (Bernadette) is the leader - an ancient and powerful female who rules the roost, advising and guiding her apprentices. She has two younger females working with her and as the story begins, she adds a third, who serves as the passport for the reader to learn how this set-up works. The newbie is amusing in her own right; she has real personality, but she;s also fascinating in that whereas other vigil-ers have swords and pick-axes for fighting demons, she ends up with a feather. It proves to be far more than it seems, however. Last but not least, later in the story, there's an Asian female from another team who, along with her male colleague, joins with Bernie's group to fight a particularly dangerous threat. This is what really won me over. It's rare in comics and it was nice to see it bloom here.

I really enjoyed this story. There were some issues with poor printing of speech balloons. I don't know what that was about. Some of it was intentional - red print on a black background for some of the evil characters, for example. That didn't work - it was very hard to read and simply annoying. In other cases the speech balloons were transparent and this looked unintentional - like someone had forgot to put in a white backing for these balloons. Some of the text was hard to read on an iPad in my advance review copy, because it was so small, necessitating an annoying need to enlarge and then diminish the page to read the text. That was a minor upset compare with the generosity, warmth, complexity, and humor of the story, so titanic good v. evil battle clichés aside, I really enjoyed this and recommend it as a worthy read.

Rat Queens The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth by Kurtis J Weibe

Title: Rat Queens The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth
Author: Kurtis J Wiebe
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Roc Upchurch and Stjepan Šejić.

Erratum:
"It'd still be in tact..." should be "It'd still be intact..." (page 14 Adobe Digital Edition).

I automatically feel nauseous whenever I read a fantasy story which has random apostrophes appearing in words. The last word in the title of this one sounds like Henry Goth! It's larded with stock fantasy phrases like "the Haruspex Requiem", and "the Glyph of Furlough", and "the abyssal plain". Newsflash: an abyss ain't a plain. But the blurb sounded interesting, so I thought, "Let's run it up the reader and see if it's worth saluting."

The funny thing is that it actually turned out to be the most engaging comic I've read since iZombie. Despite the trope and cliché here and there, it has such a modern feel to it without losing anything of its medieval setting. I am definitely going to buy the graphic novel series for this.

According to the images on page six, the Rat Queen team evidently conduct their work using a broadsword, a Harry Potter style wand dripping lightning, a dead squid, and some interesting looking mushrooms. They also play in a girl band according to one wild image, but I suspected that that was for sheer fun. It did endear me to the artist, however.

So this looks interesting so far, thinks I. The 'drummer", Betty, is a lesbian pixie or halfling, the "lead guitarist", Hannah, is a hetero elf, the singer, Delilah (Dee) is a lonely human witch, and god only knows what the bass-playing red-headed child Violet (Vi) is into. She's a dwarf, but she shaved her beard before it became fashionable to do so. Yes, this is fantasy, but it has a far more modern look to it than most fantasy you'll encounter involving trolls, orcs, and elves, etc.

This novel has so much attitude that it drips off the page. Immediately after we meet them, the girls are already in trouble for an unscheduled penectomy they performed on a large statue outside the town hall. But they're not dressed down for it. In fact, they dress quite well. Instead they're hired to go after some animated mushrooms. Next we're off to meet Lola and Sawyer, who are another trip. They're the local cops or whatever the equivalent was back then, and I love Lola's attitude. She has some of the best come-backs in the whole book.

"Dimensional demons that feed on the energy of displaced reality" sounds suspiciously like the MO of the weeping angels of Doctor Who fame. Except that these beasties aren't statues, they're squid - and squid out of water at that. How does that even work? And don't get me started on their mouths (please!), which look disturbingly like vulvas.

So, in short, I loved this graphic novel. The art work was really good, and the coloring was great. The images make full use of the page, so it's tree-friendly for the print version (as far as print versions can be tree friendly, that is!). I recommend it all the way.