Genuine pleasure to see Siku again. That flashback page where the huge image of Dredd is broken down into individual panels reminds me of Ezquerra's frequent use of the same
technique, which is what I think Carlos meant when he said he could control the speed of a
story.
Siku's horizontal panels were probably less a philosophical conceit, like Langley's aspiration to make
American Reaper feel like widescreen cinema, and more a concession to comics being read on handheld devices, but even this consideration of form as part of the storytelling process reminded me of the boy Akinsiku's transition from double-page
spreads to tall vertical
panels to convey the physical space of the lift shaft Dredd's trapped in during
When The El Breaks (1099).
These action-heavy episodes of
Scarlet Traces feel like a completely different story to the previous book's
Buddha Of Suburbia/Flash Gordon mash-up. That change of emphasis means the fantastic draughtsmanship steals the show, but the lads are onto something with the peculiarity of the sixties cultural references*, which give the strip the appeal of those SHARE IF YOU REMEMBER CREMOLA FOAM
posts Britain F*** were using to get your mum into racial identity politics.
Kingmaker is a strip that could clap two bricks between my legs without grabbing my attention, but Goblin Guy's
Final Fantasy VII box art styling hooked onto my eyeballs like Malcolm McDowell.
Dan Cornwell's characterful Max Normal art's great, but this story needed ten pages, not ten weeks. I see what Peaty & Corcoran are doing, but I preferred
Chimera when it was called
Caliphate.
* I'm as sick as anyone else of films, telly and comics that think referencing stuff you remember from other stories is an adequate substitute for creating compelling characters and original stories, but the Co-op vans and Porridge supporting characters that populate Edginton's strips get a pass just because I can't think of anyone else (certainly in comics) who judges those specific British cultural reference points to be as worthy of milking as Buffy or Star-bloody-Wars.
