Rob G (1)

Teenagers from Mars enters a strange meta world. In the city of Mars comic books are reviled by adults and loved by the youth, who act in direct rebellious opposition. The main character is a young comic artist, who falls for a girl and in order to empress her performs an act of vandalism, which quickly spirals out of control.

The book isn't meant to be real life and it certainly riffs off real situations (the comic book scare of the fifties with its panicked parents and burning of books), but it exaggerates it, bringing it to the point of satire. The line between youth and adulthood is perfectly clear. Adults (with a few exceptions of drug addled hippies) are suit-wearing fascists, who blow things out of proportion and hate comics. Adults, the book declares, have something missing, and this is made clear by the fact that several of the most dangerous antagonists are literally missing body parts.

Meanwhile, the teens and the kids are the epitome of cool. They rob graves, go to parties and get painted up as zombies (both of which make me now note the theme of death and dirt as further separate from the sterile environs of the adults), and they have a devil-may-care/rebel-without-a-cause fatalistic attitude. And in a way, they are cool (sometimes I really want to have the ability to just not give a sh*t), and the kids do relate to each other in ways that are meaningful.

Similar to many superhero comic stories, and perhaps inspired by them, the clear duality of good and evil sets the plot up to follows the tropes of a hero creation myth. How do our wayward teens strike out against the fascism of the adults, how do they fight back?

Overall like both the art and the story better here than I did reading Rick Spears and Rob G.'s other book Dead West, though even here the quality of the drawings fluctuates and some panels seem to have been handled more lazily than others, which is rather annoying when it happens during a full page dramatic scene. I'm not really sure where I stand on Teenagers from Mars. I kind of want to like it, but in the end I kind of don't. So, I guess I'll just sit in the middle somewhere and see what others think.… (meer)

In the wild west, a group of white settlers bring their claim to the land and order the local natives to leave, only to slaughter them when they don't. The sole survivor of the tribe comes back to the settled town years later, and performs a ritual to raise the dead, thus unleashing his vengeance upon the townfolk.

First, if we look past the issue of how native americans are portrayed -- on the one hand, simple victims, and on the other hand, perpetrators of of mystical and evil power -- the story still doesn't have much going for it other than action and bloodshed.

The art is okay, very scratchy and gritty in style, which actually works for the story, but there is zero character development for anyone in the book and I'm not sure why I should care if any of the townfolk or the cowboy who comes to their rescue should live or die. Overall, I wish Sparks had put more thought into the story, at lease in an effort to make the people likable and interesting, but as he didn't I'm afraid it all just falls short.… (meer)