EYEHEARTZOMBIES

So, granted, I’m not the utmost authority on comics. I read ‘em a lot when I was a kid and I still like to read them from time to time. Most of what I read now, as far as graphic novels and the like go, are manga, but sometimes a good American comic/graphic novel catches my eye and I have to read ‘em. The Sin City books were that way. Same for The Crow. Recently, it was the same for Goldenboy, by my friend Max Riffner.

I know I already sound biased. Believe me, I’m not, though. If something sucks, I tell whoever did it what I think, friend or not. Same for if something is great. I read the prologue to Goldenboy several months ago and thought it would be a great story, so I read it as soon as I could to do this review of it. Max has the honor of being the first review on this site (some honor).

Anyway, the story’s the important part. Goldenboy is the story of an aging boxer in Max’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He once had the chance of making it really big. He lost touch with his family in his quest for a life in the ring and it really knocked the wind out of him. Years later his eyes open again and he sees what he’s become. He decides to get back in touch with his daughter and open his own gym. He even wants to get another fight lined up, strap on his gloves and give it a last shot.

Goldenboy, real name Cole Parker, seems to be blessed. The gym is starting to be a success, his daughter and he have made up, and he’s ready and retrained for his coming fight. Everything is lining up in his favor. He just doesn’t know of all the evil in the neighborhood.

A young thug named “Spider” is out to make trouble for himself and ends up on the wrong side of Cole’s temper. In the end, Cole has only one option for cleaning up the city and life he’s known and it ends up costing him dearly. The neighborhood is grateful, though. Repeatedly characters remark on how Cole Parker saved this neighborhood, how he cleaned it up.

On just pure story, this book is well worth buying. Max has a great style of writing for this media. He just uses a few words, a very sparse commentary and little dialog that helps you feel like you’re discovering the story on your own. His artwork is very comfortable, too, so you feel at home in the images. I did, at least.

The limited color palette is a nice touch, too, keeping the whole thing tied really well together, with obvious transitions between subjects. Shots of the city or of buildings are black-and-white photographs, showing how they’re not really characters in the story, they’re just the backdrop.

The real characters, Cole and Spider and the rest of the neighbors are more fleshed out, more warm and vibrant than the scenery around them (which is quite often just white or a solid color, creating a great sense of space), forcing you to focus on them.

The whole piece has a very cinematic feel to it, which I really like in anything I read, comic or novel. If I can’t picture it, see how it’s all coming together, I don’t really care to read it.

There were a few places where I had trouble following who a character was in a scene, but nothing too distressing (sometimes it seemed like the two main characters, Spider and Cole, were drawn to similarly) or too distracting so you couldn’t follow the story. After a second reading, everyone fell into place.

So, my official opinion is to go pick it up. Max is offering his first graphic novel in two formats. You can pick it all up as four PDFs through ebookopolis or you can read it online as a webcomic through bitpass.