Paula Peril

It's not often I will take this space to talk negatively of an indy book. In fact, I think it only happened once with Warren Ellis' Fell. But this particular title just bothered me.

It's not that the book is terrible, and it's not even about the problems I'm about to explain. It's the fact that it could have been so much better than it is that really bothers me. It has mad potential, but it fell into some traps and pitfalls that are all too common.

Paula Peril is a book from Atlantis Studios, and is about a young reporter looking for a big story and finding all kinds of trouble instead.

Now first off with that description is already a played out theme that has no business being used again, but for one reason, if this is intended to be an homage type comic, which I think it is. But for goodness sakes, her photographer's name is Jimmy!

At any rate, the thing that appealed to me was the beautiful art and the potential story. Paula herself is a somewhat interesting character by description:

"Long pampered by wealthy parents, Paula surprised her privileged childhood friends by leaving the Ivy League and studying Journalism at state college. Graduating with honors, Paula took her dream job as an investigative reporter at the Daily Gazette, a newspaper financed by her father’s fortune. Her knack for solving mysteries and uncovering sinister plots has built her reputation as a no-nonsense journalist, but her success often makes her the target of underworld characters and jealous rivals who would like nothing better than to see her suffer in one of their numerous and perilous traps!"

And the cover art by Franchesco is, as usual, stunning. The interior art, while only in black and white, is also done very well.

Now obviously the writer is either a fan of old school comics or intended this to be an homage type comic. It features new adventures every issue in the style of the classics, and that's cool.

The problem I have with it is instead of using the best of that classic style of writing this book uses the worst, most antiquated and lamest parts of that style.

It's not even about the senseless, useless (and misused) captions and thought balloons this book brandishes, or about the overstating the obvious and over exaggerated character behaviors, though all of that is very annoying as well.

But it's the boring, unoriginal stories we've read a million times over the years with no new voice or spin to make them exciting or entertaining. It's like dozens of writers back in the day that tried to capitalize on the magic that those classic well known creators made famous. It just doesn't work. Even as an homage this falls very short.

Then there's referring to the villain of the story as a Chinaman! I understand keeping in reference with the time period, but as far as I could tell this took place in modern times. There's no need to delve back into comments like that, which now we are aware that they are in fact racist comments.

Maybe I'm the only one bothered by stuff like that, but this whole book gave me a creepy feeling like it was written by some old white guy set in his ways with blinders on shielding him from the changes in the world.

It really aggrivates me because, even as an homage, this has the potential to be a great book, But it's crippled by the narrow view of its creators and publisher.

B-Out