DC, $2.99
Story: Peter Brandvold, Sergio Aragones
Art: John Severin

Oh my oh my oh my, but John Severin’s hands ought to be enshrined in the National Trust. As his art on Bat Lash shows, he hasn’t lost a beat since the Silver Age, when he was one of the launch artists of Harvey Kurtzman’s original Mad and one of the best artists in the Marvel/Atlas bullpen. The fact that he’s still working when he so easily could fall prey to ageism or shifting market taste is a source of immense joy to me.

My joy is tempered only slightly by the fact that I’m not blown away by the writing on the book by collaborators Peter Brandvold and Sergio Aragones (another man with hands to be treasured – take a look at Groo or, y’know, any issue of Mad Magazine from the last forty years). The story is straightforward Western fare – too straightforward, really. There is absolutely nothing here you haven’t seen before plot-wise, but it’s told fairly well and it’s only part one of six so there’s plenty of room left to be surprised.

(I also wasn’t wild to find yet another “threat of rape” scene in the book – in actuality it’s a perfectly fine scene and not in any way out of place in a book set in the Wild West. Coming as it does, though, on the wrong end of mainstream comics’ Rape Parade, it sticks out like a sore thumb.)

Seriously, though, give me a book drawn by John Severin and it could be made up of Rob Liefeld’s napkin notes for rejected X-Force issues. Lucky for us, Bat Lash’s story is already more than competent – here’s hoping that it just gets better from here.