One was the artist Sami Basri who has surpassed all my expectations when he replaced Amanda Conner on Power Girl, producing gorgeous, clean lined art that was different from Conner's distinctive style but which still worked on the title.
If Basri was going to be doing the art on Voodoo, that was a point in it's favour for me.
The other main reason - perhaps the biggest one - was the writer: Ron Marz.
Being a long-time DC fan, one of my favourite characters was always Green Lantern Hal Jordan. And then, in the midst of what I thought was a good run, DC elected to boot Jordan out of the title and have Marz introduce a complete new guy, someone we'd never seen before: Kyle Rayner.
I try as much as possible to go with the flow in comics; there are few other mediums where the people in charge of your favourite characters can change so quickly, and there is always the risk that those new creators will stuff things up royally.
The introduction of Kyle Rayner, though, worked for me. He was a damn good character - still is - and was a refreshing change, a complete upturning of the status quo, re-invigorating a character and a title and with Marz at the helm, we enjoyed six years or so of bloody good stories.
Marz teamed with Basri was enough for me to ultimately try out Voodoo and, at the time of writing, with two issues out I haven't been disappointed. Now though, there's some bad news. Marz is off the title, with #4 being his last. That article in Newsarama contains a quote from Marz:
"The only thing I was told was that they wanted a different direction for the book. I had a 10-minute phone call with the outgoing editor, who gave me the news. I asked what direction they wanted, but since the editor was leaving staff the next day, he didn't really know. So that's all the information I was given. I haven't heard from anyone else, beyond a call from the book's new editor to work out details on my last issue."If that's the situation, it's a kind of crappy way to deal with someone and I'm sorry to see Marz's return to the DCU cut short, particularly as he has previous experience at delivering a new, innovative spin on existing characters.
As I said above, I try and go along for the ride with titles so will stick around and see what new writer Josh Williamson comes up with.
But still, I'll miss Ron.
That does sound pretty rubbish, from the reviews it sounds as if the book was better than expected. If you want a good direction, give the existing writer a crack at it ... it isn't as if Marz hasn't sold a lot of comics for DC over the years.
ReplyDeleteYeah, like I say it's a bit crap, really. Just had a quick look at Marz's website but there's nothing about it there.
ReplyDeleteGuess we'll have to wait and see what happens.