Deadman #4 – Neal Adams, Writer/Artist
Ratings:
Ray – 3/10
Neal Adams’ latest exercise in absurdity continues in Deadman #4, with an issue that doesn’t deliver anything resembling a coherent narrative but does deliver so many strange creatures and visuals that it’s almost worth reading. Almost.
The strangeness begins early, as Boston – disguised as his brother Cleveland – interrogates his parents over the events that led to his murder, and finds out that they were looking for Nanda Parbat and were attacked by…Yetis. Okay. But what really sells this is that we then get a four-page series of spreads of the family fighting Yetis. Let it never be said Adams doesn’t commit to his comics. The comic is at its best when he gets to simply draw weird monsters, but unfortunately, the action segments are often a bit confusing and the plot even more so. Never is this clearer than the segment after he leaves his family.
Why exactly does Boston need to convince his patron spirit that he doesn’t want to go back to Nanda Parbat, when that’s exactly what he wants to do? Heck if I know, but his refusal does allow for the introduction of the Eloi, giant yellow spirit monsters whose job it is to drag him back there, and sets off three pages of action where he ping-pongs around trying to escape them before revealing this was his plan all along. Then there’s a segment involving Etrigan and Deadman’s parents that just gets even stranger before Deadman throws a monster in Etrigan’s face to end the issue. The cliffhanger is an odd one, not concluding so much as simply drifting to a close. The pace is odd, the art is surreal, and the story is nowhere near coherent, but at least it’s unique, which is more than can be said for some books.
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
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