Cochran-Mason, Louise & Southworth, Barry – Revelations #1

Website (where you can buy the book)

Hereafter Press

664 North Main Street

Bristol, CT 06010

Revelations #1

Oy. It’s bad enough when self-published mini comics don’t have any sort of contact information, but for a comic where they went to the trouble of getting it published? Louise and Barry used “Ka-Blam” digital printing, a name I’m seeing more and more on the backs of the more “professional” (i.e. color cover and excellent production values) comics, so it’s not like this cost $0 to put out there, and they couldn’t even be bothered with an e-mail address. Sorry, but that just seems stupid to me. I put the snail mail address up there, so for the two people in the world who still use that to order their comics while still being internet savvy enough to find such things online, there you go. For everybody else, well, maybe they’ll stick with this series long enough to eventually get a working website up about it. This all came about because I was checking on some of Barry’s old series and I was curious if some of them really stalled out after one issue or if I just hadn’t seen new issues. That can be a problem when my main method of getting small press books is through review comics, as if somebody doesn’t bother to send me one after a few issues I have a tendency to lose track. Have I mentioned that I’m in a rambling mood today? Christ. So how about the actual comic, other bitching aside? This is why I was wondering about Barry’s past work: seems promising, depending on whether or not they stick to the series for a few issues, but it could just as easily fall apart. Our hero is a woman who makes a living defending vicious criminals that she knows are guilty. She’s never lost and has set countless monsters back out onto the streets. Some hero, right? Still, it makes for a mildly interesting premise. We cut to six months later and she’s about to get pummeled by a group of thugs, which she arguably has coming but, as it’s put in the narration, “deserving and accepting are two very different things.” She sprouts some short, thick claws at the ends of her knuckles and takes care of the thugs. From here we get to see our hero trying drugs to stop the changes she’s experiencing and is finally given some facts about her condition by a mysterious figure who has broken into her apartment. So what you have as a whole are some possible cliches that could turn ugly, or enough new ideas for them to make something interesting out of all of this. It’s not a bad intro, I just find as I get older that I believe less and less that there’s going to be a #3 in a series, let alone a #6 that a series like this would probably need to really get going. If you’re less cynical than me, go ahead and order it by clicking on that link, or if maybe you think you’d like this type of story and don’t mind if it dies out after one issue. Me, I’m going to reserve judgment. $3