Sheep Comic Review: Grim Leaper #4

"Grim Leaper #4" by: Kurtis Wiebe & Aluisio C. Santos

Okay, if you've been following this mini-series like I have, you've probably been waiting for a pretty big payoff to what has in the previous three issues been shrouded behind a love story. Hey, the love story is great. Lou and Ella are a cool couple adapting to an extremely weird situation. I mean, if you died and wound up getting resurrected over and over again, each time suffering a horrifically violent death only to wind up sucked into the body of another random person, wouldn't you flip out just a little bit? I thought so.

What has been gnawing at me for the entirety of this series is not the relationship between Lou and Ella, but the nature of their circumstances. Each time Lou died, he wakes up in an ethereal corridor with portraits on the wall of each person he's been resurrected into. From there, the portrait of the next poor soul he's due to inhabit swallows him up, and he wakes up inside that person's body--and projectile vomits like it's an Olympic event and their measuring for distance. Why is this happening?

As best I can tell, it's so Lou and Ella can fall in love. That's it.

If that's the case, that was a letdown of an ending for me. Oh, the overall love story and redemptive aspect of Lou's character are great, but by the end of this final issue the whole thing felt like that season of Dallas where Victoria Principle wakes up and finds Patrick Duffy in the shower. It was all a dream, none of it mattered, now f--k off and live happily ever after. And the whole jump into Ella's point of view came out of nowhere, as the backstory reveals the two actually met on the night Lou died.

I'd say this four-part series really needs to be read in one big go, like when there's a trade version or if you have all four issues in hand and at the ready. Because, waiting weeks at a time between each issue could lead to disappointment from anticipating things you've set up in your own mind. Wiebe and Santos have a really interesting story here with two very likable characters, but the supernatural aspects of their relationship needed a more drawing out for my liking.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Guest Reviewer: Gef Fox 

rabid reader, wrabid writer

Sheep Comic Review: Grim Leaper #3

Grim Leaper #3 by Kurtis Wiebe and Aluisio C. Santos

I'm really starting to wonder just where this mini-series is headed. In the first two issues, I was hooked watching Lou and Ella find each other and fall in love while discovering the nature of their predicaments--a euphamistic way of describing the violent, gruesome deaths they suffer each and every time they are resurrected into the bodies of total strangers. It's such a strange concept. You die, wind up in a limbo of sorts, get sucked into the portrait of a stranger, and wind up inside their body, breathing in and out one more time, only to wind up dead all over again days or even hours later.

It's quite clear after the first two issues that someone is pulling their strings, though it's thoroughly unclear as to why. I was hoping for some answers to that with this third issue. What I got was more questions.

The second issue left off with Ella and Lou getting into an especially grizzly car accident, so the third issue naturally started with Lou coming back to life in the body of someone else. Whether these people are about to die anyway or mere victims of circumstance, that's never discovered, along with much of what's going on. Miraculously, Lou and Ella find each other again, practically without trying and decide to go on what could be called their first date.

The date, like all of their encounters, ends with a fatal conclusion. The key difference this time, however, is their demise is of their own design. Well, the car wreck was kind of Ella's design too, but this time around Lou is included in the deathwish. What happens after that really throws the story into an unexpected direction.

Honestly, I'm really looking forward to reading the fourth and final issue of Grim Leaper, but more out of hopes to see the main story meet a satisfactory conclusion with at least some kind of explanation as to what and why is happening to Lou and Ella. But with this third issue offering no answers on that front, I've become skeptical as to just how much will be revealed in the end. I'm a fan of ambiguity and all, but I don't think I'm going to be too pleased if the series ends on that note.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Getting 3 Sheep

Guest Reviewer: Gef Fox

rabid reader, wrabid wrier

Wag The Fox: a den for dark fiction

Sheep Comic Review: Grim Leaper #2

Grim Leaper #2 (of 4)
Story by:Kurtis J Wiebe

Art By:Alusio Santos
Price:$3.50

Diamond ID:APR120538

On Sale:June 20, 2012

Series:Grim Leaper
Image Comics

Lou Collins: Serial Leaper. Lou desperately tries to find Ella, the woman with an identical curse, before his next horrific death. But, there's malevolence waiting in the darkness, something that wants to kill Lou before he even gets the chance. Something alive. 

In the first issue of Grim Leaper, Lou met Ella. They're both dead, but neither of them will stay dead for some reason. No sooner do they die a violent death, then they get sucked out of limbo and resurrected in the body of someone else. Each thought they were alone with their affliction until they met, and now it's like love at first sight. The trouble is that when Ella died at the end of the first issue, Lou had no idea whose body she would wind up in next. He just had a reasonable hunch she'd be resurrected somewhere in the same town, just like what happens to him each time he dies.

As the second issue begins, Lou finds out the name of the dead gal Ella had inhabited. So, what's a boy to do? Why, go to her funeral, what else.

Well, that would have been interesting, but it turns out that the person whose body Lou is inhabiting has a bit of a sordid past that's about to catch up to him, and in the form of an excruciating and untimely demise before he can track down Ella.

It's in his new body, of a transit bus driver, that Lou begins to grasp mortality a little more, and the aftermath of death for the loved ones of the dead. In his new body, Lous discovers the bus driver is married, which brings the specter of what this wife will be left to deal with when he is inevitably killed off in another cruel twist of fate. His only real solace comes in the form of Ella who finds him by chance in her new body, which makes them wonder how intertwined their paths through the afterlife really are.

While this issue didn't do much more than cement the severely odd relationship and circumstances between Lou and Ella, it did it incredibly well. The electricity crackles off the page thanks to more fantastic artwork from Alusio Santos, and the dialogue sharpens up even more thanks to Kurtis Wiebe's writing.

Halfway through this four-parter, however, I'm left to wonder where the story is actually headed, as the unseen force propelling the two lovers from life to death and back again has yet to make its intentions known. Hopefully, by the end of the third issue, there will be a clearer sense of the ultimate fate for Lou and Ella.

4/5 Sheep

Guest Reviewer: Gef Fox

Rabid Reader, Wrabid Writer

http://waggingthefox.blogspot.com/