The Spider / Domino Lady Team Up!

I love the Domino Lady character. The original stories aren't exactly blazing two fisted adventure, but they have a certain something that I've always appreciated.  A high society gal with a secret life as a situation solver! And she doesn't mind getting her hands dirty to finish a mission...  and yep, Moonstone publishes some top adventures featuring the character.

Throw in THE SPIDER and I'm ready for something really special to say the least.  With this "Return of the Originals" event cross-over you get sex, violence, fangs and flung away clothing.  This is a WIDEVISION book, which is basically a prose story with large art pieces placed through the center of many pages.  I like the format  a lot personally, it has a pulp feeling that doesn't adhere to keeping the spot art small.
Writers Nancy Holder and Joe Gentile have concocted a nice plot that is more violent than the usual Domino Lady and more sexed up than The Spider usually swings through and make for a great crossing of paths.  An earthquake starts the story and suddenly Domino Lady is watching as one of her best friends sees her unique marriage endangered as Hollywood grudges lead not just to studio burning and actor endangerment...but people instead BURST INTO FLAMES mysteriously.   What is a girl to do but hop into bed with a bad guy to get to the bottom.  But a not so little and not so ballistics challenged SPIDER is watching her methods before deciding to employee his own.
SMASH EVIL!!
The villain is revealed and the danger levels rise as high as pulp fans demand.  The Spider does his thing, Domino Lady does hers and the writers do a great job of making sure they do it as the characters should.  Fast, breezy and a ton of fun, this is a great little pulp tale with an ending that even The Spider smiles at.
The artwork by E.M. Gist is very solid, though The Spider artwork really excels where The Domino Lady illustrations aren't quite as strong.  As always there are multiple covers...I love the Stephen Bryant one personally.
A solid buy for Spider fans!

Now, there is a caveat, and I add it because I really like what Moonstone does in regards to respecting these characters and taking great care to give their adventures life in today's market.  A lot of the prose tales from Moonstone contain typos, and while they are few in this edition, some are very distracting with some auto-fixed words and "cop cards" popping up.  There are a few instances where it appears this is an early and unfinished draft with TK(?) popping up in some cases!
A great story and solid art deserve better and I rely on Moonstone for a lot of my comic shop entertainment.  This happens in several prose releases, and some are reprinted in collections such as The Phantom Generations, I hate to be picky, but I'm happily buying words-I'd like to see the polished final product! THE SPIDER demands it!!

Creeping, Crashing and Smashing with THE SPIDER

March has been a great month for fans of THE SPIDER thanks to Moonstone.  Not one, but TWO excellent releases celebrate one of the coolest characters in the Pulp canon! 
First up...  THE SPIDER #1.

With a cover by Dan Brereton starting things off right, we get to the newest tale of the twin gunned mayhem maker with Martin Powell spinning the tale "DEATH SIEGE OF THE FRANKENSTEIN ARMY" as the main feature.  A brief 11 pager, the plot is compact and the dialogue sharp as Nita Van Sloan finds herself in the middle of some mad science monstrosity a-go-go action.  Luckily she is equipped to let her beloved Wentworth know where she is, and The Spider is on the case.  Spooky graveyards, misshappen grotesquries and monstrous bullet sponge beasts abound as the demented hero furiously fights for his lady.  But is Nita safe with an old friend, or is something more sinister afoot?  Well, it has a twist(ed soul) that you'll love!

The story is rather minimal, but the artwork by Pablo Marcos benefits from the almost entirely composed of eerie ambiance and graphic grue being slung around.  Marcos is a master and his monsters are hideously perfect.  Combined with the canny coloring of Jay Piscopo, the tale takes on a cool neo-noir of black, white and blood red, DEATH SIEGE OF THE FRANKENSTEIN ARMY is a sharp knife of a short.
The Spider #1 feels a little strange as it plays out like a superb finale to a longer tale, and while I'd like to have read it all, you can actually do so if you are a canny Moonstoneinite.  Check out the first prose volume of The Spider Chronicles and match it up with THE CITY OF THE MELTING DEAD for maximum effect.  This is like a crazed extra payoff.  Big bonus points for when Powell busts into pulp narrative over the grisly action and THE SPIDER....MASTER OF MEN is finally said!

The Spider #1 starts a new serial with an introduction of Operator 5, an intriguing tale of Holy Rollers, Mind Control, Barely Concealed Curvy Backsides and Secret Agents.  Hey, you want my attention? Do this.  Operator 5 finds himself up to his ears in corporate politics and racial aggression in the first installment, going undercover to infiltrate the hate motivated Nordic Cross and finding himself on the bad end of a brain wipe to bring me back to the next episode. 
Where The Spider story provides a nice thrill and tons of eye candy, this matinee to the feature impressed me in it's 11 pages.  The dialogue is a bit dense, but submerges the reader in the setting this character will be operating in, which makes me hungry for more.  The action may come late, but at a short length there is very little waiting involved.  Writer Gary Phillips has a nice way of bringing what feels like a classic radio play to work with the art by Roberto Castro.  Colorist Jay Piscopo stays on board from the first tale and uses the same motifs, but with an even greater effect.  The dreary depression of the unemployed mixes well with the shadowy style of the mysterious leader of Amalgamated Press and his corporate office.  I'm looking forward to more of this character!

Moonstone is doing justice to a pulp classic with these new comics, I can't do more than recommend them...because up next comes another tale of The Spider. Tune in next time! That is right after you go and order YOUR COPY of THE SPIDER #1 from MOONSTONE BOOKS. I'll see you next time...your secret decoder ring to the comics...TOMB IT MAY CONCERN.

Jungle Action is unleashed with SAVAGE BEAUTY!

One of my favorite things about Mike Bullock's take on THE PHANTOM was the ability to mix high adventure and swashbuckling fantasy with a grounded take on the real world that gave a bit of weight to all the fisticuffs.  To put it nicely, now that The Phantom's employment opportunities have changed it is nice to see Bullock take that quality and create something new and unique with it. 
And I do love a good Jungle Girl story!
Savage Beauty starts strong and fans of the Guardian Of The Eastern Dark will be pleased to see the intensity of that series has carried over.  The trick here is give us new heroes...and Savage Beauty does it in an interesting way.  After we meet our two heroines, Lacy and Liv, both seem as carefree as can be.  Suddenly the scene switches to a young girl being raped in Kenya to please a sleazy arms dealer.  From short skirts and sexual innuendo to screaming children, within two pages the reader is thrown in to the deep end of the pool. 
I wouldn't have it any other way. 
The villains get the bulk of the pages as we are introduced to the People's Liberation Army thugs and their leader Okoye and his beautiful (naturally!) evil companion Zuri.  They massacre and barter for weapons in the flesh of children.  These are bad people that are warned that punishment is coming in the form of a Jungle Goddess. They just don't care...evil fears nothing in the savage world it would seem. 
They will learn. 
Lacy and Liv are seen working as a journalistic tag team photographing predators between the horrors.  Bullock creates some great scenes as he manages to, in 3 balloons, show the ladies see the reality beyond their bubbly exteriors discussing that nobody wants to see predators in the wild and do what they can to cover it up. The scene is interrupted by the vapid poptones that pass for music these days, easy to listen to but empty to the brain.  Obviously, these girls are not what they seem.  And then they get to work.

click to read...

The PLA is stalked, smashed and staked as the Jungle Goddess Anaya, in the form of two women, bring scars and fear to those that would harm their lands.  Aided by technology and using the weapons of ancient legend, the Savage Beauty is unleashed!

Bullock's writing is on point in this first story, setting both mood and characters in to play with ease. I know what is going on, but I want to know a lot more (and soon Moonstone!), you can't ask for more for a first issue.  Just because the enemies are serious and the story a bit rougher than what you may expect from the cover, Savage Beauty zips along with a nice NeoPulp style that isn't afraid to mix the naive elements of early Jungle Girl tales with the real life enemies of humanity today.  You'll grimace, but you'll also enjoy the fun of the action!  I highly recommend you check it out. 
The artwork by Jose Massaroli is solid and refreshingly straight forward, the storytelling is well arranged and never becomes distracting.  The trap of Good Girl / Bad Girl comics is of course to just focus on the skin, but the first issue packs enough little details into the visual story that this doesn't happen.  I liked the marks of the Goddess being evidently shown as the tears of the downtrodden...I'll gladly take that kind of visual over an extra pin up or two.  The coloring helps more in the dark scenes than the light ones, but it never gets overwhelming, which is nice. 

 Excellent writing and very solid art? That is a good start to a series I hope runs for a long time!

But you get more for your $2.99 with Savage Beauty #1.  Also included is information on TRI, a rescue organization for Child Soldiers, an essay on Jungle Girl comics, a nicely reproduced 10 page Fiction House reprint featuring great art by Ralph Mayo, a gallery of Alex Schomberg art and even some Sheena concept art featuring Raquel Welch.  Not bad at all! 
Ask your comic shop or order directly from Moonstone, but grab a vine and swing in to action with Savage Beauty today!

Bonus JUNGLE GIRL EXCELLENCE!!