Posted in: Comics | Tagged: hoax hunters, image comics, michael moreci, tim seeley

Hoax Hunters #1 – Two Reviews

Louis Falcetti writes for Bleeding Cool;

A hot girl in short shorts, with a look on her face as if she's unsure whether to smile or scream, sitting on a tarp of some kind with random moster parts sticking out. As far as cover images go, this doesn't exactly entice, excite or enamor the uninformed reader to the book's story. I mean, if I wanted cleavage, short shorts and monsters I would read TAROT.

The story is simple enough, though in it's simplicity there is the makings of an interesting plot. Playing on well worn pop culture genre tropes, it can be summed up as "Monsters are real and it's up to the ______ to ______ them." In this case the first blank is filled in with "Hoax Hunters" who are a reality television program that "proves" that actual, real monsters are nothing more than fakes, to fool the general public as it were and protect the weird wilds of the world.

Opening with a comical cajun stereotype going out in his boat to shoot gators (natch) who is spooked by something huge and terrifying (off panel) before we cut to Hoax Hunters, already in progress and in the same bayou (albeit a different boat). We now meet the cover girl, Regan, the show's host, who begins what will end up being a seemingly endless series of dry, dull exposition heavy conversations between characters we don't know. In the midst of this plot pushing dialog we're tossed little curiosity cues like a vague reference to who they really work for and upon seeing a pile of dead animals, the ominous utterance, "It's happening again."

Jack, the brawny brusque group leader than brings us to a bar where he proves either his knowledge of movie westerns or his love of Get Shorty. Unfortunately that pop culture non-sequitur will be the last spontaneous moment for nearly the rest of the book. The bar scene is the embodiment of the weakest aspect of Hoax Hunters, which is clunky, unnatural, heavy handed exposition that goes on and on and on. Every time a character says anything to anyone it's an invitation to discuss the team member's personal history, at length. Lots of "Do you remember how I joined this team?" or "You know ever since that _____" or "You know that my _____'s death made me _____ and I swore that I'd never let another _____" moments.

Characters talking about how much they love each other or how they're all like a family, in issue 1 does not endear the audience to them.

What's endearing is when we've been on a journey with characters and we watch them grow and triumph and fall together, then when the iteration of family happens, it warms us because we feel like, yeah, we're a part of that family too.

Even an aside to Hoax Hunter's HQ is for no other reason than to clumsily explain the situation with Jack's father and introduce another curosity cue, "The Carnival". This would be a "I know as much as you do and to prove it let me just say out loud the very thing that I've just stated you and I both already know" moment of dialog.

Finally after pages and pages of two characters sitting at a bar, talking to each other, about people, places and things that we have no reason to care about yet, Jack and Regan go out to meet someone (or something) named "Durand". Earlier, when we first meet Regan and she's giving us the introduction to the show on the boat in the bayou, she expresses her dislike for the mosquitos and bugs of Louisiana. I only bring this up because the post bar action sees the characters returning to the swamp, and Regan is still in her butt highlighting short shorts. Maybe she just has a ton of the best bug spray ever or maybe we find out in a later issue that she's in fact part bug and that's why no bugs will bite her. Barring either of those possible explanations, it seems like this world traveler and hunter of the weird and wild is going into a Louisiana swamp on a summer night in short shorts. I guess there's a reason the comic isn't called Pants Hunters. Then the country (read: racist) sheriff who earlier was awfully suspicious of the out of town black man drinking alone while reading a piece of paper, discovers the pair and then we find out who (and what) Durand is.

With a comic that puts the audience in media res like Hoax Hunters does, what we need is right off the bat to show us what's going on and who these people are. "Show us" being the operative phrase here, not "tell us", this is the medium of comic books, you can do literally anything and with a limitless world of storytelling angles and artistic possibilities we're introduced to a supernatural/adventure comic by way of average looking characters, talking at length with each other, with a tiny dash of anything spooky thrown in. Maybe the hoax is on the comic's audience who come seeking genre thrills and instead find only bland scenes of interpersonal drama.

Alex Wilson also writes for Bleeding Cool;

Hoax Hunters, a Hack/Slash snip off, follows a TV crew who have to purpose of making monsters appear fake to the rest of the world through their TV show. There is a small snippet of text at the beginning of the comic telling what the series is about but if that little paragraph wasn't there you would struggle to understand the premise. There was just about one page that actually focused on the filming of the TV show.

The first issue follows the team in the swamps of Louisiana where they arrive to find all the animals dead, snakes hanging off trees, fish floated to the top, and even crocodiles belly up. After this scene we really don't hear anything more about the television show and the comic turns into a watered-down X-Files.

There are four members to the TV crew but only two, Jack and Regan, are really followed in the first issues. The other characters, though, seem to be much more interesting at a glance. One of them is always wearing an astronaut suit while the other is an almost green skinned man in sunglasses.

The story jumps around too much. The writers introduce a plot point or start telling a back-story but they aren't followed up with any more information. More will most likely be revealed in later issues but the problem is that once they move on and something new is introduced, you don't care about the last element. There are many examples of this. We first see all the animals dead in the swamp and then we cut to Regan chatting with their organization's head quarters. HQ tells Regan that the "Carnival" is only about fifty miles north of their location. Regan then goes and talks with Jack and we start to see Regan's back-story, where she's floating in the air as a child and how Jack saved her. Right after that we learn about Jack's father's disappearance. There's enough information to make you wonder but not enough to keep you interested. You get the feeling they were just trying to fill pages by setting up future plots and starting (but no where near finishing) back-stories.

Moreci's and Seeley's dialog between characters isn't the best. A lot of lines feel cheesy and predictable while character actions at times seem almost idiotic. Regan and Jack are wondering through the swamp and are confronted by the town's suspicious sheriff at gunpoint. Darand, a Sasquatch that Jack and Regan know, knocks the Sheriff over and the second Darand leaves, the sheriff trusts Regan and Jack and vise versa.

Hoax Hunters seems like a really awesome and interesting idea but the idea that's sold in the title and opening paragraph of text isn't really what you get. They aren't making monsters appear fake to the public. The characters just talk for the majority of the book about how they met and the "carnival" and then they go wondering around the swamp at night (with no camera) looking for their Sasquatch friend. I recommend that you pick this comic up at your own risk.

Hoax Hunters by Steve Seeley, Michael Moreci and Axel Medellin is published this week from Image Comics.

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