Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, Review | Tagged: clint, garth ennis, john romita jr, Mark Millar, superior, the pro, turf, Who Is Jake Ellis

All-New Kick Ass And Turf In CLiNT 8 – Wednesday Comics Review

Oh look, they found a way to get a Green Lantern ring on the cover.

The new issue of CLiNT magazine is out in the UK, just as the previous issue hits the USA. You know, we get US comics hours before the Americans get theirs – yet it takes a month for the US to get one of ours? Weird.

And this issue does boast a number of firsts. First to show the first 6 pages of Kick Ass 2 #3 (or chapter 8 is it is now), the first 12 pages of the final Turf #5 (or, again, chapter 8 as it is here) with the final 9 pages of The Pro and all 24 pages of the first issue of Who Is Jake Ellis and all 3 pages of Superior #3. All oversized, and all for £3.99, with is around $7 these days. And as a result, with a bunch of text articles,  no room for any newcomer's strip.

Kick Ass 2 from Mark Millar and John Romita Jr seems like it so wants to the the poster book for the Real Life Super Hero movement as more and more people join the team, mirroring real real life super heroes as they go. Of course, it all looks like it will end up in a horrible bloodbath for them, so maybe not. And I'm wondering if Kick Ass 2 is now being written and drawn to the CLiNT chapterpage number specifications, as it ends on a splash page cliffhanger that's truly something different for this comic, not so much for the content but for the art and colour choice that give a very different, dramatic and emotional tone, something like the siren scenes in Kill Bill. I haven't seen Kick Ass do anything like this before and it's a welcome move.

But even before that, it's a reminder how much of Romita's work is a delight, individual characters in a crowd scene picked out, their own stories to tell. Check the drunk girl's friends waving her off, you know the night they've had together, so little else has to be said.

Turf from Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards welcomes its own artistic innovation in the first double page spread. For a book that has prided itself on the fine intricate lines and subtle but strong shading throughout, this is a strange, hallucinogenic jump, the look of something stretched out over a photocopier and then reimplanted into reality. When reality comes calling again, it makes for a far stronger disconnect between the two. And what a reality it is, the end game as the various protagonists and antagonists ally, swap sides, and march, with our plucky young journalist slap bang in the middle., creating her own reality. And a barnstorming speech to rally the crowd, and a crowd of gamblers at that. I do like that touch, this is what people are fighting for, and why.

And ask we discover, nor do aliens. It's great to read Turf at this size, to pick out the details that get lost in a smaller size.

But it's Who Is Jake Ellis that benefits most from this kind of printing. The larger pages help those lack expanses to really spread out across the page and it makes for a much more impressive appearance here than in the original Image comic.

The articles still feel like filler, but there are less and they are of less prominence and the magazine seems to feel happier with more comics. Talking to Titan at Kapow, they told me that while the magazine has suffered at some newsagents and supermarkets thanks to delays (though it still seems to be in WH Smiths across the land), it has found a much bigger audience in the direct sales comic stores in the UK and abroad, more than they banked on. So upping the comics content and dropping the text will presumably be no bad thing.

Next issue, we're also promised the announcement of which big Spanish director will be making the film of Millar and Yu's Supercrooks – and Red Mist returning to Kick Ass 2.

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