COPRA #1: Raging Wrath

I went into reading COPRA #1 not knowing what to expect. I knew that Michel Fiffe had created a Suicide Squad fan comic called Death Zone, and I was aware from the preview pages that COPRA was an original creation that was in the same vein as Suicide Squad. Beyond that, I really didn't know what I was getting into when I read my copy of COPRA #1, a monthly comic written, illustrated, produced, and distributed by Michel Fiffe. What I found is one of the most enjoyable first issues that I've read in a long time. COPRA is a sci-fi psychedelic mind bender of a superhero action comic...it's got intense, expertly orchestrated fight scenes and reality warping craziness, but it's also got characters that are interesting and I legitimately cared about them when Fiffe made it clear that everyone in COPRA is expendable.  

COPRA #1 opens on the titular team being deployed on just another of what we assume are countless missions that they've dealt with before. From the first panel, I was struck by Fiffe's ability to use sequential storytelling to convey ideas efficiently. We see in the first panel a silent establishing shot that makes heavy use of negative space, and your eye is drawn to the right of the image where we see a smoking and destroyed building that pulls you into the story immediately with the question of what happened there. We learn in the following panels that the leader, "Man-Head", is the cousin of someone who lives in this unnamed, presumably foreign city, and that he has been sent here with a team to deal with whatever strange phenomena blew up that building.

Fiffe then introduces us to COPRA, and the premise of the series. The idea of the comic is similar to Suicide Squad, and the so far unseen narrator describes COPRA as a collection of, "the dangerous and the hostile" who go on "black ops outings". Right off the bat, the narrator makes it clear that the team as we see it now is not a permanent fixture, and "some died, some stuck around"...none of these characters are guaranteed to survive this mission, and this makes the stakes of the narrative a bit higher. Fiffe does a great job here of succinctly describing COPRA with great tag lines like, "The throwaways had dirty work to do," and "They've humbly described themselves as the wrath of god by way of loser assassins." 

Fiffe then gets into introducing us to each member of the team through an engaging conversation between the characters. One of the strongest points of this comic is that the members of COPRA are not only appealingly weird (they look like they could be straight out of the Doom Patrol reserves), but they talk like real people. They're also pretty much all original characters except for Lite who is an obvious parody of Dr. Light. In one page, Fiffe concisely acquaints the reader with almost the entire team in just four panels through the narrator's descriptions and their pre-battle bickering with each other. 

Lite is the only character who doesn't feel comfortable with some small talk before the mission...the captions describe him as a "neurotic crybaby despite a power suit", and he's the only character who is paranoid about the weird skull with a strange, lightning bolt shaped object sticking out of it. This skull, also on the striking cover of the comic, is just sitting in the back of the van with the team, and Lite points out that they could all be getting radiation poisoning from the crazy thing. We see in the above page that Fiffe has a tight shot on the skull that parallels the following tight shot on Man-Head, which foreshadows the thing's importance and instills a sense of dread in the reader. We also learn in this page that this is an "unauthorized mission", a piece of information that Fiffe drops at exactly the right moment, right before everything goes to hell.

COPRA is confronted by another elite, superpowered team who want the skull-bolt, and "Marty", who was just talking to Man-Head seconds earlier about how his kids have stopped laughing at his jokes, is impaled. Fiffe then gets into 7 solid pages of some of the most amazing superhuman action I've seen in comics in a while. Fiffe's style is extremely kinetic and he conveys a sense of movement that just leaps at you through the page. This sequence is also hyper violent and in the first few panels the neurotic Lite is killed with a machete, following through on the Fiffe's implied promise in the beginning of the book that none of the members of COPRA are safe from death. Almost no words at all are used in this sequence as utter chaos erupts and superhuman soldiers spring into action. 

Fiffe has a dynamic style, and his splatters of paint and scratchy black inks are perfect for this kind of relentless action. His panel lay outs also greatly serve to enhance this action scene, and he ends the sequence of mostly wide panels with a two pages of a 12 panel grid. This is where this brutal action scene moved into the next level for me...we see that two members of COPRA, "a couple: sniper & brawler", are confronted by the leader of the enemy team "Vitas", who used to be with COPRA.

It's not really necessary to totally spoil what happens here, but use your imagination...there's a genuinely heart breaking set of panels where the hyper violence of the scene is halted for a brief moment to focus on this couple and what happens to them. Here, Fiffe takes this 7 page sequence of kinetic, fast paced, gruesome action and turns something that could be gratuitous into something that connects with the reader on an emotional level. These aren't just action figures banging against each other...Fiffe gives you the sense that the stakes are real for these characters, and his hyper violence comes with hyper tragedy as well.

COPRA #1 is a stellar first issue that establishes the premise of the series, the main obstacle for these characters, and the new situation that the team has to handle. The art is a really beautiful mixture of a feeling of homemade, DIY aesthetic that seems like Fiffe did it all with colored pencils, and a refined, professional look. The presentation of the comic itself, such as the highly stylized cover and inside cover, the nice paper quality, the letter from the creator on the inside back cover, is extremely professional in the way that it's been produced. Fiffe has also created trailers for the first and second issue of the series that are very cool.

Of course, this is all icing on the cake of Fiffe's compelling, action packed story with weird and interesting characters, but it was a major selling point for me when I subscribed to the next 11 issues of this series. What I find so amazing about COPRA is that it's a comic completely written, illustrated, and produced by one person and there is a concrete goal of putting an issue of the series out once a month. That's an ambitious and difficult project for one person to manage, and I enjoyed the first issue so much that I'm on board to support it. You should be too...check out COPRA #1, and the second issue is out now.

Saint's Way: A Superhero Mystery Thriller

"Saint’s Way, a webcomic in the style of a graphic novel, is about family, superheroes, magic and SCIENCE! Set on an Earth not quite unlike our own save for a few special individuals, the adventure begins with the escape of Vivian, a very angry, very strong little girl who sets her sights on New York – a recently evacuated city due to the threat of alien invasion."

I don't remember exactly how I stumbled upon Yasmin Liang's webcomic Saint's Way, but I was hooked from the first few pages. Saint's Way is an engrossing superhero mystery thriller that involves the escape of a young superpowered girl named Vivian Saint from the Saint Organization, a military standoff between Earth and aliens, and the superheroes of United Heroes who react to this odd superhuman girl and the mystery of her parentage.

I read every page of the weekly webcomic, from April 2011 to July 2012, in one sitting, and it was fascinating to witness Liang's already great art evolve over the course of 55 pages and more than a year's time. You can really see her sequential storytelling skills building exponentially as she gets further into writing and illustrating Saint's Way. Her panel layouts become more experimental, playing with the shapes and arrangement of panels, and she uses interesting color and design choices to amplify the impact of the narrative. Her writing in Saint's Way is also very effective at ensnaring you into the mysteries of the story...Saint's Way is structured in a way that pulls you into a strange story puzzle of clandestine organizations and superheroes, it's a superhero mystery thriller that leaves you on the edge of your seat for the next week's page.

Saint's Way begins with the surprising image of Vivian Saint, a young superpowered girl, tearing a driver out of his truck. Vivian is in the middle of an empty desert with rising smoke on the horizon, suggesting some sort of violent escape, and the truck stops to help this apparently lost girl. Of course, not everything is as it seems on multiple levels, and Vivian just rips this guy out of the truck and drives off in the vehicle. Liang's full page illustration here conveys the violence and speed of this moment very well; the way that the driver's hat pops off, the crumpling of the metal car door, the look on the driver's face and the painful angle of his arm, and especially the subtle blurring of the door all suggest motion in such a convincing and dynamic way.  

The story then cuts from this scene to Solomon Wynn, a bounty hunter who is making himself a sandwich while watching a news broadcast that gives us some exposition on the alien invasion of New York City. Wynn's enjoyment of his sandwich is rudely interrupted by someone at his door, "Phyllis", a slightly purple skinned representative of the Saint Organization. Phyllis wants Wynn to find and retrieve Vivian, and we learn in this scene that Wynn is an empath capable of sensing other people's emotional states. Liang also develops the mystery the extra step necessary to reel you into the story even more...Phyllis went to Wynn because of his penchant for bringing back his targets alive "even when it doesn't matter", and this time, the implication seems to be that it definitely does matter.

Meanwhile, Vivian has made her way to the mostly evacuated New York City. Not much happens in the way of story in this page, but I felt compelled to say something about it for a few reasons.  The first panel is a beautiful establishing shot of NYC. Liang uses a fish eye lens effect here that warps and distorts the wide panel, and it really gives you a sense that you're on the street with Vivian. More than that, there's an amazing amount of detail in this panel. Beyond the first panel, Liang really lets the story breath here in the rest of the page. She conveys the feeling of an empty, evacuated NYC, and her use of negative space in the fourth panel and the close up on the pigeon feather in the fifth is just beautiful, simple sequential storytelling.  

Vivian is surprised by a superhero dramatically crashing into the pavement in front of her, and we meet Citizen III. One of the most stunning elements of Saint's Way is Liang's design sense. Citizen's III's superhero outfit is beautifully designed. It's simple and somewhat minimalist, and the incorporation of a golden Civic Crown gives the outfit a bit of an ancient and classical look. The three golden stripes also represent the "III" in Citizen III, and of course, her father Citizen I and brother Citizen II each have the corresponding amount of stripes on their respective costumes.

Besides just having a really cool look, Citizen III is a relatable character with an interesting back story. Her dad is Citizen I, and he comes across as an overbearing, helicopter parent superhero, and her brother is Citizen II who is the beloved, overachiever child. Citizen III is grounded by her father for impulsively attacking the alien invaders, who are seemingly just parked above NYC, and she's desperately trying to live up to the expectations of her superhero father. It's a family dynamic that resonates on an emotional level, and makes these characters interesting.    

The debut of Citizen III on that page marks the beginning of Liang's experimentation with panel shape and lay out. You can see in the above page that as the series progresses, Liang begins to arrange her panels in new and strange ways that play with the medium. 

I should mention here that Saint's Way is 55 pages long, and I think it would do a disservice to the comic to painstakingly detail the plot in this review. My plot summary can only dilute the mystery and intrigue of the story, so you should probably just read it yourself. Instead, I'm going to focus on a few key pages that illustrate the awesomeness of Saint's Way.

Here, we see Citizen III in action, and again, Liang uses a subtle blurring effect on her first to communicate a sense of motion. I really like this effect and the way that Liang uses it to emphasize the speed and force of the attack. It gives the image an almost animated look, as if this is a still image from a cartoon rather than a panel in a comic book.

This page is really striking. Liang transitions from Citizen III flying through the city to Vivian talking in an apartment in an amazing way, using negative space and color to bleed from one panel to the other. Again, Liang's design sense is what makes this page so good...the neon blue, negative space bridge and city horizon combined with the purple night sky, and the way that it seamlessly stretches into the below panel is a really cool experimentation with the medium of sequential storytelling.  

You can see here how Liang's design sense enhances the narrative in a really interesting way. Citizen III is shot in the back, and Liang illustrates this with variations in shape and color in a way that can only be achieved in comics. The red, lightning bolt of pain that illuminates Citizen III's back in normal colors, and the faded yellow and black outline of the rest of the image is a stellar use of color palette and shape to convey the shock of this moment.

The appeal of Saint's Way lies in Yasmin Liang's abilities, both as a writer and an artist, to draw you into the puzzle of the story. Her pacing over 55 pages manages to keep you interested in the unraveling of the mystery by slowly revealing answers that only create even more intriguing questions. Over the course of more than a year, you can watch as her experiments with panel lay outs, colors, shapes, and design evolve into something pretty remarkable. Saint's Way is a compelling superhero mystery thriller, and you should check it out.