I used to have time to read my comics in a coffee shop. Now I have to read them in the bathroom. Then I write reviews of them. I wash my hands in between.
X-FILES ANNUAL #1
Man, this Annual had PROMISE. I have been loving the regular series from IDW, I mean LOVING it. They have been running a storyline that revisits old, familiar cases but in a remarkably smart way. The characterizations are spot on and the art has been realistic and dark with mostly accurate renditions of the actors themselves. The cover of this annual is spectacular! All black and white with a moody image of Mulder & Scully looking through some window blinds with and awesome Exorcist homage of a priest in a foggy courtyard. All good indications that this book would continue delivering the goods. This Annual, though, goes way off the rails.
The first thing you notice when you get past the stunning cover is that the art on the inside is...wrong. It's just ridiculous and messy. And the faces...THE FACES. They look (Scully especially) and without any exaggeration, like caricatures and I don't mean caricatures in the broad sense, I mean LITERALLY the kind of caricatures you see guys making at street festivals and carnivals. Yeah. It's BAD. Look, I can appreciate the need for different artistic styles and to change it up every now and then. I can. But I have a strong opinion when it comes to comics based on properties where there are certain actors exclusively associated with the characters. You gotta make them look like the actors. Period. Don't even try to give me the 'my drawings represent the spirit of the actors' bullshit. If you can't draw an accurate and consistent David Duchovny face, you are the wrong person to be drawing an X-Files comic.
Maybe the art took me too far out of it but damn if the story isn't dumb too. Some guy is killed while on his cell phone with his wife and his spirit/ soul/ consciousness is somehow bonded to the phone. So he can call his wife through the busted phone to warn her about the shady ex business partners of his that will be coming to kill her. Meanwhile the priest from the cover is actually a spirit as well whose job is to protect the knowledge of the existence of the afterlife from those on the mortal plane. Yeah. So Mulder & Scully show up and he believes while she's skeptical, blah blah blah. Ultimately Scully kills the shady business partner and therefore the ghost guy has no reason to stay on the mortal plane and floats off to his reward. Not a bad episode, but pretty boring and formulaic.
The second story in this annual is a little more entertaining and quirky. It's just Scully talking to a gross disembodied hand for eleven pages. It's supposed to be the hand of her high school sweetheart who never stopped loving her and who she never stopped loving either. She and he hand have this imaginary discussion every night while she's sleeping, but tomorrow the ex-boyfriend will meet the woman that makes him forget about Scully so it's down to this: she either wakes up and calls him, leaves the FBI and they live happily ever after, or she doesn't and he meets the new girl. Again, kinda quirky, the art's better, but still. Most Annuals are dumping grounds for stories that didn't quite for into the regular run. This one is NO exception.
I say skip it and save your money.
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