Handi-capable of Whupping Your Ass
Writer:
Cary Phillips
Artist:
Elena Casagrande
Colors:
Giulia Brusco
Letters:
Todd Klein
Cover:
Mitch Gerads
Cover Price:
$3.99
On Sale Date: November 23, 2016
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE
BOTTOM**
I have to hope that having recently seen the
character Vigilante on the CW television program Arrow, this miniseries is an attempt to capitalize on the small
screen introduction. I have to hope that’s the case, because DC doesn’t have
the greatest track record for capitalizing on such debuts. It looks like they
learned a lesson from there being no Supergirl
comic last year when the television show debuted last year on CBS, because
while the initial issue of Vigilante:
Southland left a bit to be desired, at the least it does exist. And maybe
issue #2 will be an improvement? I wonder how we could find out, barring a read
of the damn thing ourselves? I know, we’ll just wait for Reggie to do a review!
He’ll tell us what’s what.
Explain
It!
The first panel is an amber-tinted flashback, “Twenty
years ago” according to the caption, of Vigilante (or a fellow in the Vigilante
ski mask) cruising along on a homemade chopper. There’s an inset close-up panel
in full color of a hand touching the chassis of a motorcycle, then the next
panel proper is the same width as the first, also in full color, depicting a
guy in a wheelchair sitting next to the same bike from the first panel, but now
in the present day—we know this because there’s a miniscule panel to the right
that reads “Now.” I missed this caption on the first read, so I thought the
whole page was a flashback, and to make things more confusing I don’t remember
this guy in the wheelchair, named Mike, from the last issue. I seem to recall a
handicapped guy at Donny’s girlfriend’s wake, but wasn’t he a university
professor or something? This guy works in a motorcycle garage. Donny,
recuperating from having entered his apartment just as it blew up, is told that
he and his dad must have pissed off the wrong person, which reminds me: where
is Donny’s dad?
And this is just the first page. This book is rife
with the same storytelling problems as the last issue that make it a fairly
unpleasant read. Donny’s girlfriend’s mom is also hanging out there—at least,
I’m pretty sure it’s Dorrie’s mom—and the three of them establish that they all
thing Dorrie was murdered by a hit-and-run driver. She was carrying on Mike’s
work, uncovering a conspiracy whose nature we aren’t sure about. Seems Mike
used to be the Vigilante—called himself the Eastsider—but he was taken out with
a sniper’s bullet that I can only guess is what crippled him. We can see that
in another amber-tinted flashback panel out of nowhere, but frankly this all
requires us to fill in too many blanks. Bonny does know about some of Mike’s
exploits, like taking on some bad dudes in Boyle Heights, and wouldn’t you know
it? That’s where they are now, beneath some church on Whittier Blvd. Which
happens to look like a motorcycle shop. And has a bed and some kind of medical
capacity. Why is this all so confusing? None of it makes any narrative sense.
Does Dorrie’s mom know Mike? Is his home base in this expansive church
basement?
At this point, if I wasn’t reviewing the issue, I
would quietly close the comic and never think about it again. And it just gets worse.
Donny decides he must seek revenge for Dorrie, and his hunt takes him to the
boudoir of some dominatrix, who whips Donny in his Vigilante mask—that now does
little to hide his identity for some reason—mercilessly for too many pages.
Later, Mike trains Donny to fight by beating the crap out of him while in a
wheelchair. Says he’ll train Donny in the art of fisticuffs, but clearly will
only be able to teach moves done from the waist up. Later, Donny winds up at
the home of Vance Childers, suspected of giving the order to kill Dorrie, and
it’s like a full quarter of the book, them trading innuendo and snippets of
information before Vance is killed by a sniper’s bullet, and Donny has been
framed as the shooter. Swell.
The main problem with this comic book is bad storytelling.
New concepts and characters are introduced without any introduction, too much
space is spent on a rather gratuitous scene between Donny and the dominatrix
that is meaningless in the final analysis, and where the hell did Donny’s pop
run off to? You could skip the first issue and be no more wise about what the
hell is going on here. I think the art is okay in a stylistic sense, but it
does us no favors in terms of clarifying the sequence of events in the book. Frankly,
it’s a bit of a mess, and would be most useful as an instructive tool for
prospective comics makers on how not to develop a story.
Bits and
Pieces:
There seems to be a solid story somewhere in here, unfortunately it is obscured by poor plotting and bad development that comes across very amateurish. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the art, but paired with the confused storytelling, it gives the overall impression that this book is a mess. Not a great look. On the plus side, there's only four issues left!
3/10
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