CONTROL comic review

(Review by Melody Werner)

Control is a stupidly named 2017 crime thriller miniseries published by Dynamite. Co-written by Andy Diggle (Green Arrow: Year One) and Angela Cruickshank (this seems to be her debut), illustrated by Andrea Mutti (2000 AD), with covers by Ben Oliver (of Action Comics repute). It follows some detective whose partner is killed, she confusingly gets blamed for it, and she has to delve into this blackmail conspiracy to save her credibility and avenge her partner. Or something. As you might tell, this comic isn't very good, and I say this as someone who's enjoyed Diggle's work in the past (namely The Rat Catcher and Green Arrow: Year One). I'm not going to pussyfoot (another word which would've made for a better title than "cOnTrOl") about this. It's a bad crime thriller with very few redeemable qualities.

At first glance, one would probably see the cover, say in these exact words: "Control is a dumbass fucking name for a comic or anything (REMEDY), but the art looks good." No. The cover art is a siren song which lures you in so the interiors can eat you alive. The first issue or so looks nice enough, but as you get further in, there are some irredeemably sloppy panels which are ugly, ugly, ugly. Faces can look like those of deformed monsters at times. The action sequences, what few there are, make no sense and are all over the place. It's a shame because Mutti is not at all the worst artist out there with his work in 2000 AD being especially slick. But, as with Diggle, this work just kinda makes you cringe when paired up to other work that is of immeasurably higher caliber. You know they're both better than this. The coloring is abysmal. In a more competent comic, with quality coloring, it's not so distracting because they don't have the coloring falling outside the lines. But here? So many panels have amateur hour coloring which would take 5 minutes for anyone to fix in goddamned MS Paint -- because, yes, we aren't in the 30's, ladies & gentlemen. Now that's just lazy. Even if the colorist was lousy, surely the editors could've fixed some of his subpar work? I mean, I did a panel in no time and I'm a writer thoroughly incapable of any form of visual art that won't drive witnesses to the brink of Lovecraftian insanity. As it turns out, comic coloring has improved drastically in the many years since comics' Western inception along with technology, but I guess someone didn't tell Dynamite that when they put this tripe on store shelves. The lettering is also shoddy, with some typos. The covers are fantastic and the sequential flow is smooth enough, but that rings hollow when every other aspect is this... unpolished, to put it diplomatically.

But hey, I can deal with some shitty visuals, if the writing holds up and -- oh dear, the writing might actually be worse. Yeah, it starts out pretty great, sans some dumb lines, but that initial promise only goes so far. Contraption has nothing to go for it in later issues. The plot of Complication is generic crime thriller, and yet it finds some way to be confusing, unsatisfying, and record-breakingly uninteresting. There are no progression or stakes, it never feels like you're about to find out the mystery behind what went down, as in Memento, because it doesn't build to anything. So it just ends. It's full of side-plots and characters who go nowhere, which is not something you ever want in a crime thriller. The characters of Contract have no personality, no depth, no motivation, and completely disappear whenever they're unnecessary for the plot. I read a back-cover quote which said that the villain was interesting--no, he isn't! He is literally just a dude with white hair and a gun. A blank-slate mercenary archetype they forgot to build an actual character around.

The dialogue is awful. Insipid, even. It tries -- and fails--to have this edgy, Ed Brubaker-esque vibe. But where Brubaker would make you hate the characters from a likability standpoint, the dialogue still sells you on them because they're complex and compelling characters, Con-Air just makes all of its cast thoroughly unlikable, because they don't have the dimensions of those who populate the world of, say, Criminal. I also cannot stress how bad the main character is. She makes the typical assumptions about who did what and why with limited evidence, but where a good crime thriller would sell you on those revelations and make your jaw drop in benevolent shock (you know, what was outlined by Sherlock Holmes over a century ago), Content does not. So you're left with moments where this protagonist makes these tremendous leaps in logic and then the accused just says something like "You may have caught me red-handed, but fuck you and I'm just going to disappear, having contributed nothing to the story, k?" So is there some redeemable quality about Command? No. It is fast-paced so it's not some slog to get through. Doesn't make the read itself remotely pleasurable in any facet -- god no -- but that does make it """"tolerable"""" enough.

Combo isn't a very good comic. It's readable and if you're bored one day and have exhausted all better alternatives, it won't eat your soul or anything. Not a comic you would actively seek out, but instead a last resort of inutterable boredom at best. But Conflict typifies something I said back when I read Bedlam (a much better thriller, but you can read my review of that if you want to see me musing about something worth spending time, money, and effort on): I love crime thrillers, and I love comics, but most crime thriller comics are bad. Conker is doubtlessly one of the bad ones. Control gets a 4/10.

Lame

Summary:
Comatose is as trashy as its forgettable name suggests. Seriously, even a Steven Seagal movie wouldn't use a name like this. It's a nega-comic, a how-not-to. If someone looked at this and did everything opposite to it, then they'd have a damn good comic on their hands. It had potential, but it squandered any it could've had on being bargain basement tripe. As is, it's ugly, boring, insipid, and sloppy in every respect.

(Originally posted: 3/7/2018)