Comics Fondle

Common Foe is a terrible, terrible comic book. It’s truly incompetent. Over its five issues, the comic goes through two artists and neither of them can draw distinctive figures. It’s not just the characters all looking alike, even the uniforms look alike. The monsters all look the same and are supposed to, so I guess they’re well-drawn.

I’m not sure what Keith Giffen wrote and what Shannon Denton wrote, but I’m guessing Denton handled most of the actual scripting (just based on knowledge of Giffen’s previous collaborations). Common Foe is the kind of comic book a fifteen-year-old–a really dumb one–would write. Every other word is a curse word, almost all pronouns are taken out of sentences to make the dialogue “realistic.” It’s a joke. It’s no wonder Diamond didn’t distribute the last issue.

I read all five issues of Common Foe because there’s something astounding about the narrative structure. I’m used to companies turning script treatments into comic books, but not specific comic creators. It opens with a scene from the fifth issue, I think–the artists are so bad at action scenes, it’s hard to know when–then flashes back to the setup. Except the setup takes four of the five issues. There are some encounters with the monsters, sure, but the promise of the series–Americans and Germans united against monsters–doesn’t arrive until the last possible moments.

And, had I not read the entire series, I never would have known it’s all about Giffen trying to get his vampire comic optioned. I wonder how long Giffen waited after Steve Niles sold 30 Days of Night to start work on this excrement.

I’m sure there are a bunch of comics this poorly written coming out every month, but I expect those from the laughable little companies in “Previews,” not from Image. Common Foe is the kind of garbage people ought to stand around and page through to mock, especially since laughter burns eighty calories a chuckle. I could have eaten twenty-five or thirty pizzas for these five issues.

F

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