REVIEW: End of Month Reviews #56 - August 2008 [spoilers]

[Jason Kenney]

>      Running late.  Having severe cranky attacks at myself for
> running this late.  Not gonna bother finishing off the half-
> finished review of Beige Midnight, or even make more than a
> cursory attempt at making sure grammar and spelling are correct
> for what I have written.  So there.  

Hot damn, reviews!

> Post Modern #1
> 'Rescue'
> An Artifice Comics [AC] story
> by Jason S. Kenney

That's me!

>      A casual glance at the series title might cause it to be misread
> as 'post mortem' - which would be thematically appropriate. Pacific
> City has been destroyed by the forces of the Imperial Magistrate and
> all that's left is to pick up the pieces. Longtime readers who
> nevertheless only read the AC stories on rec.arts.comics.creative
> will most likely be familiar with the lead-in to this setup from
> the ginormous run of 'Bush43 Daily' material posted back in June
> and July of 2006, where Bush43 - both in and out of costume - was
> desperately trying to prepare against the Imperial Magistrate's
> feared return.

Damn, good memory, sir.  And, honestly, I'm not sure anyone's actually
read every - single - issue of that daily run other than myself and
the guy I had edit them (by force).

Since then the city has seen itself wiped out in the pages of
Millennium Man and New Mages and now the whole site is starting a few
years after the fact, a world without PC and all that jazz.

"Post Mortem", that's good.

As the series will eventually show, "Post Modern" is the ACU's US term
for super powered beings.

>      The focus character here is Cassandra Trellis, sometime
> girlfriend of Jeffery Carter/Bush43. The story opens with a brief
> flashback to the main fight scene, then cuts to the memorial service
> a year later, when Johann Weisz contacts Cassandra about helping him
> track down people who may, in turn, know where Jeffery has vanished
> to.

Actually, the story starts three years post-PC having The Seven get
into a bit of a mess in Prague.  Cassandra and Weisz are members of
said Seven.  Then it's a flashback to two years before, one year after
PC.  I think I made it all a bit too obtuse.  Was trying to be artsy.
Instead was confusing.

> This turns out to be at least somewhat deceit, as it is mainly
> about tracking down and rescuing superhumans who have been captured
> and held at a government facility. Diplomatic immunity and
> government deals protect them from the consequences, but their
> expulsion from Australia makes it look as though these leads now
> run dry.

"Diplomatic immunity" and the like is a big ol' case of me making s**t
up but making it sound official and impressive, but probably making
the story boring and stuffy (I tend to fall into political talk and
number crunching at times, my bad).  I hope it didn't come across dry.

> Assuming this isn't a one-off story, then the 'post
> mortem' investigations of where Mr Carter has gone will need to
> take another tack.

Issue two should be out by the end of the month.  The first arc of 4-5
issues will bring a lot of familiar ACU faces up to the present and
fill in some of the gaps for AC from the end of Pacific City (2003) to
present day ACU (2008).  A lot of new stuff is happening at AC, but
PoMo (remember the caps, otherwise it looks like you're typing
"porno") will play with the old toys to keep the site connected and
the history there.  At least, that's the goal.

Thanks for the review, Saxon.  You're great.