Artist: Ian Snyder
Last week I managed to make it up to my local comic shop (Books, Comics, and Things in Fort Wayne, IN plugplug) for the first time in a couple of weeks. I dread events like this. After missing a fortnights worth of comics, seeing the stack that the hapless employee has to pull from my drop box really tugs at my heartstrings. That is soon followed by the whimpering noise that I can safely say comes from my wallet.
Diving into the pile like so much Scrooge McDuck, I found my usual melange of Marvel and DC fare peppered with the indy books I buy (new Shadow! Ragemoor! Sam Keith drawing for Dark Horse Presents!), a benefit book for the Hero Initiative, the Gene Colan tribute book, and this copy of a book called Ursa Minor, which I didn't remember ordering. I'm not saying I didn't order it, as keeping up with my list is a somewhat Herculean task. Previews and I may have a bit of an impulse control issue from time to time. Regardless, either I ordered it and promptly forgot about it, or it was mistakenly placed in my box and some fanboy is somewhere lamenting that he did not receive his copy of Ursa Minor.
I'm inclined to think the latter, because I don't know if this one was exactly flyin' off the shelves. It was put out by Big Dog Ink, which immediately conjured forth images of a printing press churning out comics from the back of a tattoo shop in Long Beach. I've never heard of the company, and after perusing their website I didn't find out too much about it. It's sparse with any information about the company, and the latest update in the news section invited me to come see them at C2E2. Which was in April. So, after a grim bit of research I plunged into Ursa Minor.
Set in 2013, the book tells us mankind avoided destruction from any whackadoo Mayan doomsday prophecies and bravely strode forth until disaster of another form struck. At the president's inauguration, werewolves leap from the crowd onto the stage and eviscerate him.
Well, alright Ursa Minor! Start this party with a bang! The United States, now aware that werewolves exist, go on a rabid nationwide manhunt to exterminate the werefolk. The potentates of a few other nations are assassinated by werewolves and soon a worldwide coalition is formed to hunt down and destroy their common enemy.
Then vampires out themselves to mankind, before they could be accidentally discovered, and offer their services to, "eradicate the werewolves, wererats, weredeer and any other shape-shifting creature..."
Weredeer? Screw it, I thought. I'm pot-committed at this point.
So, vampires go about eradicating werewolves as God intended, and it's revealed that a myriad of other supernatural critters, elves, bigfoots, faeries, nessies and whatnots exist.
Hurm...
Eventually humanity suffers from White Guilt and declares werewolves an endangered species and allowed them to live their lives.
No word on if they were all relocated to reservations.The last half of the book takes place in a supernatural strip joint where all manner of pixie, elf, seraphim and Teenage Catgirl shake it for the drooling crowd. An archetypical hawt bitchy vampire girl walks in with her archetypical vampire goons and it's revealed they're following rumors of a werebear stripper working at the club. This counts as one of the more ludicrous sentences I've typed in a while. A half hearted fracas ensues between a vampire goon, the werebear, and the bartender of the club and we are FINALLY, 2 pages from the end, introduced to who I can assume to be our main character.
This was a very, very mediocre book. The premise was promising, but rapidly devolved into a 'vampires and werewolves and faeries, oh my!' kind of storytelling I would expect to see in a Zenoscope book. As a matter of fact, the whole book seemed like a Zenoscope book. The pacing, the slightly cartoonish art, overly vibrant colors, all seem like they were lifted from the Zenoscope playbook. Virtually no characters were introduced, much less developed and the few lines of dialogue that were spoken evoked the exposition laced 1990s. I know that there was a lot of backstory to fill the reader in on, but half the book was told in narrative over pictures, and then abruptly changed for the second half to standard comic storytelling format.
I will say that the layout was very good, and the cover art from Natali Sanders was excellent. Aside from those two high points and the initial premise being engaging, this book was pretty poor.
Bad Dog.
By: Will Dubbeld
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