Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!
There’s not a lot new or different you can do with the subject of amnesia. So when the first-person narrator of PASSENGER wakes up on a Baltimore bus with no memory, and an address scrawled on his palm, obviously he’s going to end up there. And obviously he’s going to spend every waking moment searching for any piece of his past. And obviously he’ll give his full attention to anyone who claims to know who he is, no matter how weird or far out the explanation. Obviously, obviously, obviously. That is, to everyone except the author. Ronald Damien Malfi shows occasional flashes of fascinating insight, but this latest work chases its tail for all 221 pages and ends up with nothing. Jason Bourne, another well-known amnesiac, discovered deep-seated espionage skills; all Malfi’s character discovers is that he’s a pretty good piano player. That’s the only definite thing we know after finishing this otherwise pointless tale. Well, that and the time wasted waiting for something alluring to happen. Where’s a good dose of amnesia when you need it? —Alan Cranis
From the popular website comes ASK A NINJA PRESENTS THE NINJA HANDBOOK. The paperback may look “forward to killing you,” as its cover warns, but it seeks to instruct all in the ways of ninjatude — from proper flags and oaths to merit badges (all black, of course) and hiding stances. Some of it is genuinely funny, appealing to my absurdist sense of humor (like the “my first kill” journal with such entries as “What did I like most about the kill? What will I do differently next time?”), while other chapters are merely nonsense. That’s to be expected in a humor title that throws everything it has against the wall to see how much sticks (general rule: the gruesome illustrations do), but why is this thing 325 pages? At the risk of being attacked at night by ninjas, that’s overkill. A good comedian knows when the joke should be told no longer; this guide isn’t quite sure when to quit, so it doesn’t.
Ed Brubaker spins a satisfying supernatural mystery in THE SANDMAN PRESENTS: THE DEAD BOY DETECTIVES, a 2001 creation just now being collected in trade paperback. Charles and Edwin are two British kids who are, yes, dead and detectives. They’re hired by a teenage girl to help find out who killed her friend and fellow runaway, and how the corpse was devoid of any fluid. Sometimes assuming wispy ghost form, the invisible kids leave their treehouse office to dig into a child-killer conspiracy that dates back more than 500 years. The first half is better than the second, but Bryan Talbot and Steve Leialoha’s art is solid throughout. As for the titular connection to THE SANDMAN? Well, Death shows up for two panels, but says nothing. Perhaps it’s there to just move more copies? Worked on me.
As night falls on Gotham City, its citizens are protected by a lonely figure. Well, yes, there’s Batman, but I’m talking about Simon Dark. He’s the homeless teen with no memory of his past, but more notably, he’s the guy who’s stitched together from other bodies, thus making him look like a rag doll. SIMON DARK: WHAT SIMON DOES collects the first six-issue arc of perhaps the strangest mainstream comic in recent memory. Writer Steve Niles has turned to the FRANKENSTEIN myth before — in the great, gross WAKE THE DEAD — but this take is more interesting, and partly because Simon seems partially retarded. Scott Hampton’s art is a good match for this bizarre crime tale, perhaps the only one featuring a character who removes an eye and plants it in the wall to spy on the story’s antihero. —Rod Lott
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The Sandman connection for the dead boy detectives: The two boys first appeared in the pages of Sandman, in a short intermission story in the “Season of Mist” story arc. One of them was a live boy whose father left him over the summer at his boarding school. Unfortunately, he’s there when all the bad dead boys of hell are released back into the world. Abuse at the hands of one of the dead boy bullies leads to his own death. His dead partner was dispatched previously in a Satanic sacrifice, which is how a good boy like him ended up in hell.
Thanks for the explanation. I’ve read the entire SANDMAN run, and I don’t remember that at all. Then again, it’s been quite a number of years.