News from the North

Two separate reputable sources agree: The Executor was the seventh best graphic novel of 2010 - Playback:STL Comic Book Resources (I am amused by their precision of agreement. There's more overlap than I would have expected, actually; four books appear on both lists.)

I have mixed emotions about this Comics Journal 1 review, because in Part I the guy really slams the first few Vertigo Crime books 2 , and in this one he disses Andrea's awesome artwork; but he also uncorks this great line re The Executor : Can’t Canadians ever think up any other vision of human tragedy than having one’s hockey career end in a freak injury? which you have to admit is pretty funny. Oh, yeah, and he also says The Executor is the first in the series where a non-comics writer—in this case, Canadian crime novelist Jon Evans—pulls off a seriously good script. In fact, this is the most successful story produced in the series thus far [...] The Executor succeeds because it is a well-written and taut mystery that manages to engage far more deeply than one might expect with legacies of race and violence (and repression) [...] [a] hard, edgy and quite genuinely surprising script. Which, y'know, sure beats getting hit in the knee with a baseball bat, at least from my PO...

(Click to see it larger.) Also, a great review from The Onion 's AV Club: The latest in the stark, gritty Vertigo Crime graphic-novel series, The Executor (Vertigo) is a winner. From its creepy cover to its cathartic ending, it hits all the notes of a top-flight thriller, and its few weaknesses are overcome by its strengths. While novelist Jon Evans (Invisible Armies) lets his script get a tad too bogged down in exposition early on, it recovers quickly and delivers a handful of moments so startling, they jump off the page. And while the slim-lined art by Italian cartoonist Andrea Mutti (Le Syndrome De Caïn) isn't ideal for the book's tone, his outstanding use of shadow and light and his moody backgrounds more than make up for it. The Executor tells the story of former hockey goon and small-town boy made good Joseph Ullen, who returns to his roots in upstate New York when he's made the executor of his high-school girlfriend's will after her mysterious death. The wi...

Well, actually, this time 'round it's really just reviews, for The Executor : " The Executor is full of evil surprises... Writer Jon Evans ( Dark Places ) is savvy enough to know he must add sufficiently engaging twists on a well-worn path, and does. And Italian artist Andrea Mutti ( Nathan Never ) is amazingly accomplished." —  Scripps News "Andrea Mutti's use of shadows and ability to really get the most out of the black and white is amazing... Evans has some wonderful characters in this story and the way he weaves in and out of various threads of the plot eventually bringing them all together is almost magic. The ending is bittersweet and yet perfect. Evans has raised the bar for this group of books from Vertigo." —  Crimespree Magazine "Evans' story is unsettling, laying bare the inhumanity, the anger and the violence that can ruin even the best. The plot is fast-paced and filled with physical action... and if the ending isn't a storybo...

This here looks suspiciously like a cover: I think I really like it. I also think I like that it's coming out in hardcover. (I was expecting paperback.) But I do not like their innovative spelling of my name . Sigh. Ah well. At least they got it right on the actual cover, and they do generally (though not always) fix this sort of thing before the actual publication date. eta: aha, it's on Amazon.com as well as those .ca sites above. Go forth and pre-order your little hearts out! Meanwhile, I intend to commence the rewrite-to-editorial-order of Beasts of New York next week. (Reductive surgery, but otherwise no major changes.) Oh, and Invisible Armies hardcovers are on sale from Amazon.com, for a presumably limited time, for the bargain price of $4.46 . ( etaa: said price has now skyrocketed back to $19.96. If you snoozed, you losed!)