THE REMY REVIEW

A feed of my thoughts on film, comics, and other media. Opinions are my own but can be yours too for the one time bookmarking of this page. Enjoy!

[remy-review]

VINELORD VOL 1 & 2 (REVIEW)

To Defend All Living Things at All Cost.

That is the creed of the Vinelord, a green-skinned warrior clad in wooden armor, who looks like a cross between one of Zack Snyder’s 300 Spartans and a creature from The Legend of Zelda.

Raven Stories’ Vinelord Volumes 1 and 2, totaling an impressive 66 pages written by Brigham Porter with art by Dawson J Weidrich, tap into the mysterious protector’s mythology, and introduce the riveting origin of Trystan Wiles.

I turned to this book feeling plump overfed on corporate storytelling. I needed something indie that didn’t stink of multiverse shenanigans. Vinelord seemed as any a good a place to start, having myself long been a fan of Weidrich’s art, and I had no expectations besides the vague Swamp Thing comparison many readers will presumably draw on impulse. Vinelord is very much its own beast though.

(SPOILER WARNING)

ROOTS BELOW: THE ORIGIN OF TRYSTAN WILES

A brief overture depicts an electrifying battle between the Vinelord of 1052 AD and a demonic trio. Solemn narration over the hack-n-slash sets the story’s dramatic, violent tone. Sadly this is the last we see of this Vinelord for now, but the scene suggests that Vinekind have been around for centuries at least.

The book’s true story begins at the Wiles Family Plantation in 1892 Baton Rouge, where Trystan Wiles and his young brother Ash pick cotton on a hot afternoon. Serene fields paint an enviable life for Trystan. The boys then come home to find their mother crying though. She has been hurt again. A vase lies smashed on the floor by their father, a decorated soldier returned from war. “He didn’t mean it, it was an accident,” Trystan’s mother says as he looks emptily at his father’s cruel portrait.

Trystan’s unmoved expression echoes Ryan Gosling’s performance in Blade Runner 2049 of a character so close to their breaking point that their capacity to react is impaired. Our hero does react, however, by taking Ash fishing while a nearby storm closes in. He knows his father wouldn’t approve but to hell with what the old man thinks. It’s this small act of rebellion that faces Trystan with a choice, fateful in ways he could never imagine, when his brooding devil of a father intercepts his trek back home…

His father being the antagonist of his ordinary world I thought made Trystan’s origin unique. It seems common of heroic stories that the bad parent trope is a revelation of their extraordinary journey; a dramatic reveal that shatters the core of their beliefs. Not their status quo. Similarly, their heroic origin often arises when their internal comfort zone is threatened by an external force. Everything is fine until it’s not.

But the Wiles patriarch has an expressed history of being a bastard, and Trystan’s resentment towards him seems almost beyond forgiveness. Nothing is fine, everything is awry. That is his status quo. It could of course also be argued that his father’s time away in the war has allowed the eldest Wiles son to configure a comfort zone excluding his father, making the estranged character his external threat. Though his story beginning in a place of misery beyond the mundane feels almost like the proper makings of villain, or a disturbed anti-hero at the very least.

There is obviously still so much to learn of Trystan’s complex story. He bravely displays both natural goodness by defending another character in a fight he knows he can’t win, and a reluctance to power when offered. Two heroic traits just right there. Perhaps these creative choices are simply taking account of the world’s morality being grayer than our favorite stories often portray. They are nevertheless appreciated nuances for nuanced times.

BRANCHES ABOVE: THE EXECUTION

Vinelord is packed with action, suspense, and most importantly, sincerity. Volume 1 has at times an expected amateurish charm, being the first book released by Raven Stories, but is an inspired work with care sewn into every line, written or drawn.

Volume 1’s art relies mostly on color to create value. Line art is less pronounced than Weidrich’s later work. Being familiar with Dawson’s more recent art, I realized how far he’s come in making his pieces pop. Here are only a few pages that made a striking impression though (DIALOGUE AND NARRATION REDACTED):

Porter’s script is equally clean. It averts trying too hard and never gets in the way of the art. 1892 Baton Rouge dialect could have shone more, but the script’s narration is a believable and solid guide for this page turner.

And I wouldn’t levy criticism for criticism’s sake. It is impossible to calculate how much tireless work goes into an independent book. It was because of book 1’s forgivable, sometimes even admirable, shortcomings that I was downright gobsmacked at Volume 2’s upgrade across the board.

Volume 2: The Vinelord Reigneth is an impressive indie comic.

The script this go round is punchier and has more attitude. It both reflects a seasoned protagonist  (Reigneth partly taking place as many as forty years since Volume 1) and signifies a practiced writer. One notable improvement is Porter’s usage of timing for Vinelord’s unexpected quips.

Weidrich likewise returns with a complete style revamp. He employs darker color schemes heavy on black digital ‘inks,’ fuller and more complex shapes, and richer textures. It’s a tattoo-esque look akin to the DJW trademark style, where cross-hatching complements deeper color shading than the previous volume. The art’s three-dimensional depth goes in hand with the its most striking feature; dynamic perspectives.

Objects reach beyond panel confines, shadows are as engulfing to the reader as to the characters they obscure.  It’s these artistic components that together make the reader feel wholly part of the action.

The plot itself drives forward intricately with splicing of flashback sequences. Reigneth after all picks up from a hazy forest at the end of Vol 1, and revolves this story around a future timeline that has Trystan battling evil...

Volume 2 poses more questions to the origin of the Vinelords; The quasi-religious pre-determination aspect, the fate of previous Vinelords, and of course, how much Trystan has to give before the mantle passes on again…But the biggest puzzle leads us back to the beginning.

To Defend All Living Things at All Cost.

Sounds altruistic enough… but can it be done? Any ecosystem will tell you that death is not only a part of life but that life itself is a death-giving force.

The paradox of the Vinelord’s purpose is I think by design. This creed could be concerned merely with the protection of human life from supernatural evil. However, the character’s creators have opened up a bottomless ravine of slippery slopes for Trystan to stumble on.

What happens when those that Trystan loves war against each other? How will he handle human evils with supernatural evils? How can he prioritize one life over another? Is he warrior or peacekeeper?

These entanglements, it occurred to me, are their own kind of vinery. One that Trystan may find he’s far from Lord of.

These questions will hopefully receive answers in (God-willing) bountiful subsequent issues of this character. Regardless, wherever the obscured steps of Trystan’s mission take him next, Volume 3 of Vinelord can’t come soon enough.

Purchase Vinelord Volumes 1 & 2, and other Raven Stories tales,

Here: https://djwart.net/store (not an affiliate link)

[remy-review]

Batman #125 (Review)

(Image: Jorge Jimenez | DC Comics)

Off the heels of Joshua Williamson’s brief run on the Caped Crusader comes Batman #125. This new saga of Gotham’s Knight starts strong with an oversized issue featuring two stories penned by Chip Zdarsky. The first of which, Failsafe Part One, teams the writer with artist Jorge Jimenez, and features Tomeu Morey on colors while Clayton Cowles provides lettering.

In Failsafe Part One, Oswald Cobbleplot hatches a plot to kill all of Gotham’s elite unless they donate their riches to the public. Batman and Robin foil Cobblepot’s grand attack at a Gala, in which a financially diminished Bruce Wayne has been invited to. Of course by the algorithmic sequences of his crime fighting tenure, Batman is reminded that it’s never that easy.

Zdarsky and Jimenez were tasked with crafting a Batman story and they’ve delivered. What’s interesting about their approach is that Bruce Wayne almost seems to know it’s a Batman story. Wayne is characterized as a weary but diligent veteran. He stays ahead of the curve, plays his part and keeps his head. Even when the plan goes sideways, Batman showcases both his proactive and reactive readiness. Though his forlorn mug through it all makes it seem as if he’s going through the motions.

This isn’t a bad thing.

Batman’s stoicism, while at times an elemental characteristic, has in recent years wilted to varying degrees. With all the given popularity of an emotionally volatile Bruce Wayne, one instead more reflective, who can grapple with his problems from his armchair just as well as his arsenal is a welcomed return to form.

Failsafe Part 1’s pace is aided by Jorge Jimenez’s excellent portrayal of motion. From the passenger seat view of the batmobile, to characters lunging off the page, the art rarely feels static. It rather feels like a motion comic in stasis. Jimenez and Morey supply exceptional work, clean without becoming boring. More importantly they express this Batman in ways that often only art can. However, Zdarsky’s script is equally strong with incremental thrills on every page.

Two Birds, One Throne Part 1, the issue’s comical backup, finds Selina Kyle in the crosshairs of claims to the Iceberg Lounge in Cobblepot’s wake. This story, which one can’t help but dub Battle For The Fowl, offers colorfully textured art by Belen Ortega with Luis Guerrero on colors. The art’s glossiness makes the story all in all feel like a different genre. This may speak to the tonal range of Zdarsky’s vision for Gotham.

Teaming these titanic creative forces in comics on DC’s flagship title seems only a stroke of destiny, so much that one would have to ask what took so long.

[remy-review]

Liam Sharp’s StarHenge #1 (REVIEW)

Liam Sharp’s StarHenge hit shelves this week for a brand new science fantasy take on the Arthurian mythos. Book One: The Dragon and The Boar, from Image Comics, spawns a diverse cast of characters in a winding narrative over multiple timelines.

In these timelines we meet Amber and Daryl, two teens caught in a bittersweet romantic affair on the cusp of separation, and Wyltt, a wayward adventurer and warrior of the future.

There was never a question of StarHenge’s artistic majesty. The few preview snippets released over Sharp’s social media teased something daring and inventive, but even those underpromised the book’s magnitude. Inside and out of the pages’ non-confining panels sprawls a dreamscape of terrorizing beauty. Sharp is clearly playing by his own rules here, and employs both a complex palette and versatility in style. All at once at the turn of a page the comic can shift from sepia and monochromatic photorealism to a vibrant feverish murkiness intent on swallowing the reader whole like the deep space and dark waters that the art depicts.

Sharp's character design is one of the book's finest elements. Impossibly human characters such as the Ur-Queen and the macabre figures known as The Cast, a race of cybernetic tormentors wearing human body parts, gravitate between the awe-inspiring and the horrifying. These striking visuals will, for better or worse, implant themselves in the subconscious and night time thoughts of readers.

Though despite Sharp’s scope of visual imagination, StarHenge never becomes too lost in its lore that it loses relatability. The artist’s knack for singing a song of suffering within just one facial expression makes the story’s most down to earth moments as gripping as its multidimensional voyage.

It should also be noted that Sharp, a published novelist, proves himself a formidable scriptwriter. StarHenge’s so far limited cast is of characters each distinct in motive and expression. The creator has obviously spent a lot of time with them as people, and not merely as vessels of the world’s fluid forays into witchery, technology and what binds them. The narration style took time to get used to but I’d have to expect it’s not without purpose.

I doubt that from the story’s rich lore and sometimes distractingly impressive art, readers will fully absorb the book on first read. Even after a second pass I found myself flipping through its pages, backwards and forth, perhaps as a story dealing with thens, nows, forevers, in no particular order, should be experienced.

StarHenge #1 is simply a knockout, and moreover a promising start to Sharp’s magnum opus, which will no doubt seal its place in both the comic medium and epic mythological storytelling.

[remy-review]

Alexisonfire’s Otherness (REVIEW)

(photo: https://distortedsoundmag.com)

After thirteen progressively strange years since their last full length release, the Canadian post-hardcore quintet Alexisonfire have returned with new LP Otherness, to declare they’re not finished with the genre or with us.

Otherness will no doubt please fans of 2009’s Old Crows/Young Cardinals. Its influences are expectedly diverse, as each of the band’s members have had the opportunity to explore and evolve musically in their collective hiatus, and bears little semblance to their early sound of playing fast for fast’s sake for the Canadian mosh scene.

Though when that mechanical riff opens the bass-heavy and politically charged “Committed to the Con,” it quickly sets in that the boys are back.

The album instead makes it stride in stadium sized sounds, a sonic field of swelling distortion and crashing cymbals that envelopes echoes of soul and gospel as much as Alexisonfire’s hardcore roots.

Otherness is most certainly a mood. At times its easy to be lost in its heavy, psychedelic impact of fuzzy droning guitars, but thankfully that soothing chaos never comes at the cost of the songwriting. The act’s triage of vocals supplied by George Pettit, Wade McNeil and Dallas Green, persist through the mix to deliver some of their finest songwriting to date.

“Sans Soleil,” the album’s final pre-release single and standout track of Otherness, I’d be surprised to not find on every setlist from now until the band’s final show (or end of time, whichever comes last). What sounds like it could be a repurposed City and Colour tune was actually written by band’s lead guitarist/vocalist Wade McNeil. Somewhere in the process it was decided best to be sung by Green, whose voice on this record ranges anywhere from bedside story to emergency siren. This choice and others brings to mind one word to describe this album: Confidence.

If anyone knows where Alexisonfire has been these thirteen years, it’s Alexisonfire—and if Otherness is any testament, it’s like they never left. They clearly know as individuals what they bring to the songwriting process and to this record they've brought their best.

This album incorporates much of what has defined Alexisonfire through decades, from the Crisis-era public riot soundtrack that is “Conditional Love,” to “Dark Night of the Soul,” itself in parts akin to the gospel undertones rife within “The Northern” from Old Crows/Young Cardinals. This is a record from a band who knows who they are and where they’ve been. Like the time-displaced Billy Pilgrim, of Kurt Vonnegut’s (a notable inspiration to the band) Slaughterhouse V, there were moments listening to Otherness where I felt transported back to even my earliest days of knowing their music.

The natural melancholy of Green’s voice, crucial to encapsulating the sound of cold night that seeps from the band’s discography, grabs the spotlight in “Mistaken Information.” This song takes us to the church of Alexisonfire where human ideals are memorialized. If, like me, you found yourself falling asleep to “Burial” on repeat so many years ago, then “Mistaken Information” will stop you dead in your tracks. And if, like me, you pull off to the nearest parking lot on your drive home just to soak in its mournful euphoria, you’ll be glad you did.

Of course it wouldn’t be an Alexisonfire release without ending on a grandiose emotive ballad. “World Stops Turning” is exactly that, a 4-chord descending passionate expression of love and longing. Its beautifully rambling structure scored by character-rich guitar solo from McNeil (one that should only make sense in a live setting but still works) is the perfect endnote for the return of the only band ever.

You can listen to and purchase Otherness on all platforms now.

8.5/10

[remy-review]

A Window of the Waking Mind (REVIEW)

Prog-rock icons Coheed and Cambria are back with their 10th studio album, Vaxis II: A Window of The Waking Mind, the long (though far longer in feeling) awaited followup to 2018’s The Unheavenly Creatures. The band’s latest effort continues the story of Nia Worn and Nostrand Crane, two escaped fugitives, and their powerful son, Vaxis. The album brandishes its share of Coheedisms and its concept echoes the earliest adventures of singer/guitarist Claudio Sanchez’s The Amory Wars. Though like its namesake, Vaxis II is a brand new beast and is ripe with fresh direction both musically and thematically.

A Window of The Waking Mind admits us back into the realm of the Keywork with a familiar melody from Unheavenly Creatures’ “Old Flames,” only this time sung by a young voice. We are taken to believe that this voice in the opening track , “The Embers of Fire,” is none other than the child Vaxis himself.

In welcomed Coheed fashion, the opening track transitions seamlessly into “Beautiful Losers.” Hardcore fans might pick up on this reference to one of Claudio Sanchez’s former projects, a proto-coheed if you will. The song might be described as their standard fair, with a sound reminiscent of the non-conceptual The Color Before The Sun. It’s one of the more percussively relaxed songs on the record, characterized by a heavy chugging guitar through its verses that’s never quite on the brink (ha, get it? HAIL!) of sounding aggressive. The chorus, however, will undoubtedly be a crowd swaying delight on the band’s summer tour.

The album picks up speed with “Comatose,” a fast paced punk bop in which drummer Josh Eppard truly shines and that also breaks the ice with Vaxis II’s courtship with vocal effects. The pre-chorus and chorus here are just two of the countless melodies down the tracklist that will be living in our heads rent free. 

Without spoiling the album, I will emphasize it as a culmination of eras that breaks the barrier of what’s to come. There are elements that harken back to the Afterman duology, Color, Black Rainbow, and some guitar work which sounds directly lifted from In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. However, the tart, hard-plucked guitar harmonies of albums past feature here as mostly accents, especially in the last act of VAXIS II, starting with “Ladders of Supremacy.” Fans of the Good Apollo albums will want to savor Ladders, as it bleeds straight into “Rise Naianasha (Cut the Cord),” one of the album’s singles, on to where everything is brought home by the eight-minute title track.

The writing for this record is unrelentingly personal. It simultaneously reflects the events of the latest Amory Wars chapter, while also resonating as an honest picture of Sanchez’s own life, from his marriage to raising a child, amidst challenges in the paranormal era of the COVID pandemic.

Sanchez’s emotionally raw writing takes flight on the album’s sentimental banger, “Blood.” A lyrical message seemingly meant for both Vaxis, from his parents, and to Sanchez’s own son, marks one instance of the singer’s songwriting ability to deliver meaning across two universes; our own and the one he has created.

Admittedly, as a long time listener of the band (which founded my interest in comic books and modern progressive rock) I half-expected no surprises from Window. Post-YOTBR Coheed, with no discredit to their musicianship, has seemed fairly niched down in the way they write songs, guitar parts, even albums.

Heaven’s Fence, was I wrong.

While the album’s singles released over the past year, starting with “Shoulders,” were impressive on both a musical and production level, they were not a complete picture of what the album has to offer. Vaxis II’s show-stealing tracks, “The Disappearing Act,” a dance hit driven by a poppy 4/4 beat and EDM-influenced synthesizer line, and “Bad Man,” a song which emulates The Weeknd, will no doubt confound much of Coheed and Cambria’s fan base whose expectations of their music may fall within the ballpark confines of 80’s influenced dad rock.

Vaxis II might be Coheed and Cambria’s tightest release to date. It offers the host of their finest qualities, with the cleanest mixing and producing of their career, and manages to do so in under an hour. Vaxis II’s most memorable impression, though, is of Coheed and Cambria’s fearless willpower to adapt through time and explore new sounds.

You can listen and purchase Vaxis II: A Window of The Waking Mind on all platforms now.

9/10