What Do You Mean They're Not Superheroes?: Best Books You Didn't Read Last Week 12/29/08

Guerillas #3
Written & Art by: Brahm Revel

Alright. Go back to your store. Speak with the clerk who is there, talk with the Manager if you must. Have them order Guerillas #1, #2, & #3 for you right that very instant. This is going to be one of the best books you read ever. And you're not already reading it. As a matter of fact if you don't start reading it soon you might miss out on one of the most overlooked books of 2008 and what might be the best book of 2009. Brahm Revel has created one of the most unique and pleasurable reading experiences of my comic reading life (20 or so years long now ... I've been reading comics for 20 years?!?! ... I'm old). With his deceptively simple pencils and incredible hand at inking and grey toning he has managed to make an amazing visual style that suits perfectly the story he is telling. Which is equally as amazing. The story is at once a dark and frightening look at what it must have been to be a soldier in Vietnam ... constantly kept in the dark of what your future holds, always afraid of what lay around the next corner, lied to by those who were meant to be your leader. At the same time it's brilliant the way he has juxtaposed John Clayton's experience among his squad, that of being the man left out, with his experience among the chimps ... one of solitude of a whole different kind. This is easily one of the most satisfying comics that I have read in a very long time and I think that it is a tragedy that more people aren't reading it. Make sure you at least check it out, you can read the whole first issue over at Newsarama, once you've read it make sure that, if you haven't already, you go to your local comic store and have it ordered for yourself ... I'll know if you don't

The Best Book You Didn't Read Last Week, Issue 15

Guerillas #2 (of 9)
Written and Drawn by: Brahm Revel

As Darren mentioned in his article yesterday we, the Comic Dorks, have an incredibly difficult task on our plates each and every week, where we have to pair down the pile of books each one of us reads and talk about just six of them a week. Since I have a much larger pile than either of my other co-Dorks each week I have a much more difficult task. I have to figure out which two of the 20+ I am going to be able to talk about. That's one of the reasons you'll often hear me talking about a book all on my own on the show (Like this week with Gigantic #1). So that's why fifteen weeks ago I also started writing the "Best Books You Didn't Read Last Week" article. Each week I pick one book from the stack that I think more people should be checking out. Once in a while it is a book that is so good that it actually hurts a little to have to write about it. This is one of those books.

Guerillas is one of the best books of this year. Without question. Brahm Revel is one of the names that needs to be talked about in every comic store across the country. He is a craftsman of exemplary talent and the story he is writing is nothing like what you might expect based on the covers or the solicit text.

When I first saw this series solicited I thought it was going to be a fun little farcical tale about monkeys with guns. What I actually found was a dark and complex tale of a man trying to fill his father's shoes, and a dark experiment by a strange scientist gone awry.

Looking at the book you might expect talking monkeys ... you won't get them. You'll get monkeys that have distinct personalities, non-verbal personalities but distinct nonetheless. Quite seriously this book went from being really great to absolutely priceless. I think that it is going to make for one hell of a collected story when it's done, fortunately it also reads FANTASTICALLY in single issues.

Brahm Revel is most assuredly going to become one of the hot names to look for over the next year and a half as this series progresses towards it's conclusion. From what I am aware the first issue is no longer available from Diamond but perhaps if enough people demand it we'll see a second printing of the quiet hit of the year, and my favorite book of the 4th quarter of 2008.

ComicDorksCast Episode 030

ComicDorkscastEp030.mp3
(Download Directly: Right Click and choose "Save As..." and save locally on your computer)

Running Time: 01:17:02

00:04:50 - Rob and Scott enjoyed the progression of the back story in New Avengers #44.
00:14:06 - Scott's Pick of the Week: Guerrillas #1.
00:23:20 - Geoff Johns continues to wow us all with Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #2.
00:29:19 - Rob's Pick of the Week: Catwoman #82.
00:36:03 - Opinions are mixed over Runaways Vol 3 #1.
00:41:35 - Darren's Pick of the Week: Superman #679
00:49:01 - PREVIEWS!
01:03:00 - Brief Mentions
01:05:35 - Anticipated Books

If you have any questions or comments drop us a line at: Comicdorkscast@gmail.com

Go to www.FantasyShopOnline.com and check out the growing community on the Message Boards.

Check out our website at ComicDorksCast.Blogspot.com.

The Music at the opening and closing of the show was: "Don't Talk Down" by The Stills.

Living Up To Expectations: Guerillas #1 (of 9)

Guerillas #1 (of 9)
Written and Drawn by: Brahm Revel

So, I am about to tell you something very, very contradictory. I have an absolutely incredible fascination with Monkeys. Especially talking ones who wear clothes or costumes. And yet I have railed against Marvel Apes like a firebrand with a cause and a bloody pulpit to proselytize from. But that is not what this review is all about. It's about Brahm Revel's incredibly unique tale of the dark days in Vietnam in 1970. The main character is John Francis Clayton the son of a soldier who finds himself in the unenviable position of being sort of without direction during wartime and who starts to believe that the "regimentation of the Army sounded like a better and better idea". He is walking into the kind of life that no one should ever want but that his father wanted so badly for his son. To go off to war as a boy and come back as a man. Private Clayton watches in defenseless horror and utter cowardice as his entire squad is wiped out. He is on the verge of dying himself when he is saved by perhaps the most unlikely of all saviors, a squad of American BTU clad monkeys carrying M-16's. There is something that I also love about war stories. I have a list as long as my arm of comics that I absolutely love that are all war stories: The Other Side, Last Day in Vietnam, The Unknown Soldier, The 'Nam, Punisher: Born, any of Garth Ennis' war comics, The Light Brigade, and more and more and more. There is something about the camaradiere that is shared between soldiers. There is something about Brahm Revel's artwork that is also very reminsicent of the work that Cameron Stewart did on The Other Side. Go, seek it out, it's totally worth every penny of the $5.99 cover price, and it's not often that I would say something like that but this issue has 52 pages of uninterrupted comic in this issue and it will be a bi-monthly book ... so definitely check it out!