Alphacore #1

Many have accused the Rippaverse of being a stunt. They have gotten at July’s writing with a level of bad faith that isn’t surprising, but still annoying. And frankly there’s some basis for this: July’s dialogue is awful and he chose to start the Rippaverse with a slow burn world-building arc. July has said repeatedly that he did this on purpose. After all these repetitions you can either believe him or be an idiot. But with the hiring of Chuck Dixon to write Alphacore, the Soska Sisters hired full-time, and Mike Barron to write Goodying, the picture changed. July backed up his declaration that he was in for the long haul.

Welp, here’s the first non-July project, Alphacore #1! It’s next to me as I write. It’s quite pretty, as per the Rippaverse standards. This is a premium product. It’s pretty obvious where a lot of the money went. I could go on, but it’s repetitive at this point. Point is: this is a really well put together book, especially for 28 bucks.

The pencilling by Joe Bennett is amazing, front to back. There's a reason why he was a front-line penciller before being blacklisted for not being on the side of the cancel pigs. His storytelling particulary is on point, something that has been pretty standard for the Rippaverse so far. But there are not one, not two, not three, but FIVE fucking inkers on this book. FIVE. What the hell is this? Why are there five inkers on the project? There is no way they can maintain visual continuity with five of them, no matter how much they may talk, email, or cuddle after their orgy. And it shows in the product, trust me. There's moments where characters radically change appearance and you can tell it's coz that inker didn't stick to the other four freaking inker's styles hard enough. One of the characters, a cop called Wilkins, suffers more than any of the others, in some spots looking like something out of a redneck satire. I would have been okay with waiting a bit longer for the book, even swapping its debut out with Yaira #1 if that was a thing that needed to happen. But it wasn't, and that leads me to believe that we may see more crap like this. It is because Joe Bennett is so good that the book doesn't look like a total travesty, as opposed to just janky. The instant you hand a lesser penciller to five inkers there are gonna be problems.

Oh, and there's two colorists, and they really didn't freak talking to each other. They clearly didn't even try. One of the strongest moments in the whole book almost falls part coz I can't tell if the guy is supposed to be a red-head or a fucking blonde.

The fact that all of this adds up to "okay" art is a miracle. It's just janky at times. This could have gone a hell of a lot worse. Hand this to any lesser artists and it would have been a complete laughingstock.

Fortunately the story is awesome. Oh my God I love the story in this issue. Chuck takes the 96 page format and makes it sing. The beleagured and harrassed Alphacore, comprising the idealistic-but-dumb Bryan Solari, smart-but-temperamental Ingrid Valdez, and the silent cypher Braxten, stumble acrost the machinations of the shadowy Michael Copper and Lilian Ronashi. The book opens with Solari stopping a bombing attempt at a bank... only for the bomber to be legitimately surprised when his bomb goes off. It's one hell of an opening. And it just rolls from here. The story builds and builds and builds and then doesn't explode (literally), in the best way possible. The Alphacore are beautifully rendered in their frustrated-and-flawed glory. See, they want to be "regular" cops, but they're not regular, they're Excepts, and they're only wanted for whenever other Excepts are screwing around! This isn't a totally unreasonable request. Alphacore are justifiably frustrated, coz they want to be cops. And they can't just be cops. So they get more and more frustrated and start making mistakes. These are people just being people, with the epic consequences of their mistakes and frustrations being front and center. It's to the credit of Chuck that every beat of the way makes sense, but isn't defended or glorified. I love that every single second of these flawed characters is fun. Heck, my pulse started going up! It was fun! I had a great time! And the ending felt so damn good to read. I mean it. This is why I buy superhero comics. This. Right here.

I'm going to address Chuck Dixon's ending note now. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the mainstream U.S. comic book industry is falling apart at the seams. Sales are horrible, the books are worse, and frankly if I was an artist having to draw one of these new books I'd cry, coz they're so boring. Dixon's ending note, and the fact that 1 million bucks (so far) has been spent to glory in this end note, not to mention the incredible comic book before it... that should be very disconcerting. Change is here. If change keeps looking like stories like this the mainstream needs to get with the program, and quickly. But they won't. The note will go unheeded.

Alphacore has a lot of problems, and I spent most of the review bitching about them. All the things I said are true, but they are potentionally misleading. 

This book is so much more than the sum of its parts.

A lot more.

And it is a failure of me, as a writer, that I cannot adequately explain that. This comic builds on itself in a way that very few outside of Chuck Dixon can adequately do these days, nevermind hit it out the part like he does. The ending of this comic feels good. This comic feels amazing to read. There are so many problems with it, but everything clicks together so fucking well that it's honestly a bit breathtaking to witness. This is a great comic. Buy it. Yeah, there's problems, but man that last double page spread is so fucking cool. 

I love it.

It really is that simple.