THEY SOLEMNLY CONVENE TO MAKE THE SCENE
The best comic on the stands at the moment is THE LOSERS. Apologies to all the other best comics on the stands, but you should have come out as frequently as this does.
LOSERS I like especially because it confirms a long-standing theory of mine – that 2000AD work is the best comics training a writer can have, because the only way to get any kind of regular work in 2000AD is to learn to effectively and consistently tell a story in five pages or less. I have a terrible, awful feeling that I deeply offended famed writer/artist Midas Prolifico – names have been changed – at some con when I drunkenly suggested in his hearing that once you’ve learned to do five pages, yank comics are a doddle ’cause they’re just four stories in a row and an extra bit. He gave the most terrible snort of contempt, although it may have been mucus.
But then LOSERS #1 appeared. And who is right? IT IS ME because LOSERS has all the raw thrill-power of three lesser comics, contained in the pulse-pounding pages of one! If it was any better it would have to be SEALED IN THE VAULTS WHERE IT CANNOT HARM ANY HUMAN.
It’s a caper comic, as in Danny Ocean. ‘Caper’ being a theft/break-in/infiltration in the manner of Tom Cruise being dangled through a skylight by Jean Reno, and he can’t sneeze or the room will explode and he has to pretend to be a fireman. The first issue had three different capers in it and there’s been at least one in every issue since, this latest one involving a birdshit-firing gun, which is what Metal Gear‘s missing. It’s a fun comic with a wonderful mixture of serious hard-hitting topicalness and funky, funky spy-breakin’ schemes, and the ending to the latest issue will leave you reelin’ with a feelin’ not unlike having your head repeatedly thrust through a plate glass window made of stolchnaya frozen by science gone mad. And I should mention that Jock has the sheer pulsing life force of some oiled Elvis and must be contained now lest his art drive the world to a frenzy.
Get the first issues while you can. Soon Diggle and Jock will be esconced in a gold palace and you’ll be lucky to find one on Ebay for less than the price of your firstborn child. Wiser men will stroll slowly past your suffering, weeping form, murmuring “Tut, tut. HE CANNOT BUY IT NOW.”
Or you could get the trade.
Vic Fluro in The Brown Wedge • 353 views