What Does the Fox Say?

The Fox #1

Okay, I’ve cut back really drastically on my superhero reading, thanks to dropping most of DC’s books, so I should check out a few independent superhero comics. This is the part of the relaunch of Red Circle Comics, which is basically the superhero comics line for Archie Comics. Our lead character in this comic is Paul Patton a newspaper photographer who periodically takes the superheroic identity of the Fox, mostly trying to find interesting news he can take pictures of. And usually, the news he runs into is much, much more exciting than he really wants to deal with.

So in this issue, Paul gets to interview the beautiful Lucy Fur, a social media star who’s launching a new site called MyFace. Paul is smitten, at least until he discovers that Lucy is actually a skull-faced demon called Madame Satan! Can an unpowered hero survive against a supernatural demon? And the the backup story, the Fox must deal with a living, shapeshifting house that wants to steal his vintage Polaroid camera.

Verdict: Well, really, I’m not that sure. The story’s fine, the art is fine, dialogue and characterization are both fine. But it just seems sorta middle-of-the-road. Something like this needs to bring its A-game to drag people away from Marvel and DC, and this comic isn’t committing yet to playing the A-game. I’ll keep reading it, at least for a few issues. But it needs to take things to the next level if it wants to be anything other than something quickly forgotten during the next summer crossover.

The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys #5

There’s a lot of stuff that happens in this issue, a lot of it pretty weird. Blue gets shot but recovers and discovers the deactivated form of the giant robot Destroya. Korse is dropped into a re-education center, but escapes through sheer force of will. Cola and the Girl both get shot; Cola dies, but the Girl has an out-of-body experience, talks to someone called the Phoenix Witch, and learns that she has the power to drain or recharge batteries and to restore or create life — and that her cat is actually a tracking device. Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a lot of weird stuff, but it makes sense in context — even more so, it makes a lot of awesome in context. Don’t know if this story is really post-apocalyptic or if it’s more of a pre-apocalyptic thing. Or if it’s a reverse-the-apocalypse thing. Heck, I dunno, but it’s good fun.