2018.008 Vigilante: Southland

Can you like and hate a book at the same time?  Because I liked this and I hated this.  I think it was a solid story, but it was poorly told.  I don't know who Gary Phillips is, whether he's a comics writer or if this is his first experience in the medium, but his storytelling was very clumsy and in places, very cliched.  I think in someone else's hands, this story may have been executed better.  It reads kind of choppy the way he jumps from scene to scene.  It's unsettling sometimes.  But the story itself, like I said, is solid.  It's a fresh take on a classic DC anti-hero and I could definitely read more, but the stories would need a lot of work first.

Vigilante: Southland

Written by: Gary Phillips

Illustrated by:Elena Casagrande, Moritat

DC Comics

053 Vigilante By Marv Wolfman Vol 1

DC began collecting a different New Teen Titans spinoff series, Deathstroke, The Terminator, a few months ago.  And that surprised me by how well it's held up over the years.  I found myself genuinely enjoying that book.  So when this was announced, I was hoping for the same reaction.  This book came before Deathstroke if memory serves.  I remember enjoying it when it was brand new.  But reading it today, I didn't have the same reaction.  Marv Wolfman can write when he puts his mind to it.  Here, it felt like he had a few ideas but didn't quite know how to execute them.  Part of the problem was this book was published at the height of DC letting a handful of writers also edit the book.  Never a good idea, if you ask me.  

There was something I found especially laughable.  Technology.  This book used a formula with it's cast that's commonplace today.  We have the hero out there in the action.  Back at base we have the support team and their computers.  But with Vigilante, base was a giant camper parked out in the woods.  And I really don't know how they found anything with their computers back in the mid-80s.  First of all, everything was dial up.  Extremely slow dial up.  And second of all, the computer was in a camper in the middle of the woods.  How did they get a dial tone?  LOL!

By the end of this collection, it seemed that a direction for the book was starting to form.  I hope this book does well enough to warrant a second book.  I want to see if that direction actually firms up.

Vigilante By Marv Wolfman Vol. 1

Writer: Marv Wolfman

Artist: Keith Pollard, George Perez, Chuck Patton, Ross Andru, Don Newton, Pablo Marcos, Dick Giordano, Romeo Tanghal, Mike DeCarlo, Rick Magyar, Dan Adkins

DC Comics