The Voice of Death

VoiceintheDark1

A Voice in the Dark #1

I’ve got a bit of a soft spot in my heart for radio — I worked as a DJ and quasi-news dude for years, and despite the fact that radio station owners are, without exception, morally bereft, incompetent morons, I still have lots of fond memories of my radio days. So a story based around radio is something that’s gonna grab my interest.

Our lead character is Zoey Aarons, a young college student with a newly adopted little sister — one of her best friends, Seven, who was outed as a lesbian by a schoolmate and then disowned by her family. Zoey’s family adopted her, and Seven is very glad to be part of the family. Oh, but that’s not the important part of the story. See, Zoey murdered the girl who outed Seven, and she has nearly constant temptations to kill again. She’s a budding serial killer, and she has no idea how she’s going to make it through college without killing someone else.

Her lone strategy for keeping her inner psycho at bay is to run her own late night talk radio program on the campus station, encouraging people to call in anonymously and talk about whatever dark thoughts are on their minds. Can wallowing in other people’s darkness keep her own murderous urges under control?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I absolutely love the characters and dialogue, and our very unconventional serial killing heroine is really fun. She’s clearly keeping her emotions knuckled down, partly to keep herself from just going stabby on everyone, partly because her uncle, a homicide detective, lives in town and checks up on her periodically.

And maybe more fascinating than the story and the characters is the comic’s creator. Larime Taylor has arthrogryposis, a birth defect that leaves his joints in locked positions. He has almost no use of his arms or legs, so he draws with his mouth. And the artwork is absolutely fantastic.

So in other words, great story, great characters, great art, a great creator — and radio. Worth picking up, y’all.

YoungAvengers12

Young Avengers #12

Mother and Leah plan to tear the earth apart with an invasion of alternate-reality evil Young Avengers — and with Mother’s mind-warping powers, the grownups will believe that all the bad guys are really the Young Avengers. Luckily, our heroes have some backup — almost every teenaged superhero on the planet. Can they stop the invasion? Can the Young Avengers fight through Mother’s hand-picked, shallow supervillain guardians to rescue Hulkling and save the world?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A fun, action-packed, characterization-rich story told with incredible style. You’ve likely already heard that Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie will end this comic in a few issues — I actually don’t feel that bad about that. Great storytellers should be allowed to tell their stories their way — and I also have faith that the Young Avengers will return before long.

2 Comments

  1. Larime Taylor Said,

    November 22, 2013 @ 2:23 pm

    Really glad you liked it!

  2. scottslemmons Said,

    November 22, 2013 @ 2:28 pm

    I enjoyed the stuffin’s out of it. Definitely looking forward to the rest of the story. 🙂