If you want a more thorough review why haven’t you read Conor’s Pick of the Week? If you’d like a little more insight keep reading.
After 16 months, I still consider myself as a returned reader to the comic medium. Oh sure, I’d read a few trades here and there but I hadn’t had a pull list in more than a decade. There were many new creators to sample when I returned but it was always the familiar “legends” that felt like “going home again”. This book was no exception to that rule. In fact, the emotional spectrum in this book will take you from nostalgic boyhood glee to sorrow and everywhere in between.
Joe Kubert’s passing doesn’t pull any punches with the sorrow when you realize that this mini-series was a project close to his heart. A creator is at their peak when they truly love what they’re doing. Kubert makes that abundantly clear in a note to the reader about why his book is in the format it is. He wants to read comics like this and is pining for the nostalgia of this kind of comic story telling. I had a pain of sadness that Joe couldn’t hear from his fans about how great this book is and that these will be the last stories we get to enjoy from the master story teller.
I read this book out of order. I was in control of how I chose to consume these stories so I decided to save the cartoonish “Angel and the Ape” by Buniak for last. I’m glad I did. The Hawkman story was a tremendous opening number. Everything about it was a perfect comic story with stellar art, decent pacing and just enough of a throwback feel to hit the high notes of nostalgia. I followed this with Kubert’s Spit. It’s done I his pencils and lettered conventionally for a really great look. It’s like Joe was telling a story out of his sketch book. I want more of this story but it ends on a rather depressing note.
The third story I read was U.S.S. Stevens by Sam Glanzman. It’s a great story about Naval battles and US sailor’s in World War II. The art is spectacular and the story is decidedly heroic even though not all hero’s make it home. It is a reminder of Joe’s classic war stories and hit’s all the right nerves. It doesn’t leave you as down as spit; and, if it were the last story you read in this book, it finishes the book with a refreshing but sullen catharsis. It wasn’t the last story for me though, “Angel and the Ape” was.
Brian Buniak has a very “cartoony” style that Joe mentions might not be for everyone but has the feeling of an old time serial. Mr. Kubert also mentions that the reader might not get the humor but that he himself would pay for any psychological testing on said reader if they didn’t like it. I agree with Joe. Buniak can certainly spin a good comedic story full of onomatopoetic punctuations and background gags that had me chuckling. One particularly flustered looking rhino had me laughing aloud.
My read of it was an experience that ran an emotional gamut. There isn’t anything I didn’t like about this book; even the price is a great deal for the 48 pages of ad free content. Sure the trade will be there for you but this is the last time you’ll be able to get monthly stories by Kubert in this special format. That’s part of the experience and it’s something you’ll be looking forward to for the next 6 months. If you’re a Kubert fan who was on the fence about this book you should go pick it up now.