crime comics

Tag Archive: crime comics

Resident Alien–A quirky, funny adaptation of the sci-fi mash-up comic lands on Syfy

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January 28, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Another pandemic delayed production finally makes its way to TV audiences this week. It’s the Syfy Channel series Resident Alien, based on the crazy-good Dark Horse Comics sci-fi/crime/mystery mash-up comics by Peter Hogan (2000 AD, Tom Strong) and Steve Parkhouse (Milkman Murders, Doctor Who)–first reviewed here at borg back in 2013. Airing Wednesday nights, the show stars Alan Tudyk as the extra-terrestrial hero who survives a ship crash on what was supposed to be a quick mission to Earth, Coneheads-style. Taking on the part of Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle, he is able to mask his appearance using his otherworldly powers. Like E.T. he just wants to go home, but he must wait until his friends come to find him in the town of Patience, Colorado, an Everwood-style small town full of medical crises that he must attend to after the town doctor is found dead. He gets pulled into a murder mystery, which he takes to like Agent Cooper in the town of Twin Peaks. It’s this police procedural drama-meets-sci-fi blend that is taken forward in the story.

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Resident Alien–While waiting for the new TV series, check out the Dark Horse comics

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April 7, 2020

With all the changes at the movies, including delays for The New Mutants, originally scheduled for release two years ago and seemingly cursed to never get released by the studio, a television series also based on comics still doesn’t have a firm release date. That’s Syfy’s series Resident Alien, which currently is marketed to arrive this summer on the heels of Syfy’s current, similar vibe, sci-fi comedy Vagrant Queen. Based on a sci-fi/crime mystery mash-up series of comics beginning in 2012 by Peter Hogan (2000 AD, Tom Strong) and Steve Parkhouse (Milkman Murders, Doctor Who)–and first discussed here at borg back in 2013—the television series will be headlined by Firefly, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Doom Patrol fan-favorite actor Alan Tudyk.

Tudyk plays an alien posing as a human doctor (a la Coneheads), but he’s cloaked, at least to some. The big news for the series is that Linda Hamilton (The Terminator, Chuck) will co-star as a military general pursuing Tudyk’s alien visitor. Sara Tomko (Pandemic), Corey Reynolds (The Closer), Alice Wetterlund (People of Earth), Levi Fiehler (Mars), Mandell Maughan (Life), and Alex Barima (The Exorcist) co-star in the series.

While you’re waiting for this series, get caught up on the comics, released in five trade editions you can track down from Elite Comics or your local comic book store. In the first story arc we meet the alien and see how he goes undercover as Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle in the first murder mystery. The second collection takes the alien/doctor to Seattle to try to help a new-found friend. The third finds him sleuthing out a criminal also hiding behind an alias in town. The feds arrive in the fourth arc, and the fifth arc/collection finds him on a trip to New York City.

Here is a short preview for the TV series:

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Tags: Alan Tudyk, Alex Barima, Alice Wetterlund, Corey Reynolds, crime comics, Levi Fiehler, Linda Hamilton, Mandell Maughan, murder mysteries, Peter Hogan, Resident Alien, Resident Alien TV series preview, Resident Alien: The Suicide Blonde, Sara Tomko, shelter at home 2020, Steve Parkhouse, Syfy Channel, The New Mutants, Vagrant Queen

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Breakneck–Swierczynski’s fast-paced crime/action graphic novel arrives this month

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June 2, 2019

Review by C.J. Bunce

A smartly constructed assemblage of events and characters collided in a tightly written crime story in Edgar-winning writer Duane Swierczynski′s mini-series, Breakneck. One of the most exciting of Hard Case Crime and Titan Comics′ line of books and comics based in a modern setting, Breakneck is a spy tale, terrorist story, and diehard action thriller about an unassuming Everyman who gets mixed up with a federal agent trying to foil a terrorist bombing in historic downtown Philadelphia. The four-issue series from this past winter is getting released in a trade paperback this month, and is available for pre-order now here at Amazon (the UK edition is in bookstores now). Fans of the crime genre and quick action graphic novel reads will find this story worth checking out.

If an incapacitated federal agent needed your help to save the world in the next 93 minutes, could you drop everything and do anything imaginable to help, even if that agent is someone you hated so much you were planning his death? Swierczynski doesn’t give you any time to answer that question, as he sweeps the protagonist into a seedy motel, with guns pointing in every direction, guys being thrown from windows, and a woman tied up asking for help. Before you have time to ask how all these characters keep crashing back together, another woman is tapped to join in the race to stop the end of the city from happening.

Artists Simone Guglielmini and Raffaele Semeraro, and colorists Lovern Kindzierski and Chris Chuckry nicely choreographed 109 pages of action with the streets of Philadelphia as a backdrop. Breakneck began as a novel for Swierczynski, which then turned into a screenplay, and finally landed as a comic book story. An excerpt of the novel is included as an appendix in the new graphic novel format compilation.

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Seduction–New true crime series looks back to classic pulp crime comics

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December 18, 2015

Review by C.J. Bunce

Truer to the classic pulp crime comic book genre than the likes of recent monthlies like Fatale or Velvet, writer Ande Parks and artist Esteve Polls are bringing back those 1930s-1950s stories once found in the pages of Crime Does Not Pay and Crime SuspenStories with their new series Seduction of the Innocent. Comic book collectors and historians will recognize the title from Frederic Wertham’s infamous anti-comic book diatribe, and Dynamite Entertainment is playing off that shocker moniker here to good effect.

Behind the title is the classic pulp noir storytelling we were fans of in IDW Publishing’s recent throwback mini-series The X-Files: Year Zero reviewed previously here at borg.com. As with old crime magazines, you’ll find “horrific tales of true crime”–murders and crime scenes–as advertised yet “horrific” from more of a 1950s eye than a Tarantino-esque blood-splattering as found in most current crime series. Writer Parks pulls from his broad knowledge of crime stories and history to begin a story that could have taken place in Anytown U.S.A., but he has chosen a San Francisco FBI office from 1953 as his starting point.

Not only is Parks known for his artwork on Green Arrow and El Diablo, Parks has had critical success writing true crime accounts including Union Station, Capote in Kansas, and Ciudad, as well as work on classic favorite characters Kato, The Lone Ranger, and Zorro.

Artist Esteve Polls evokes that straightforward “just the facts, ma’am” Dragnet style look with his panel renderings, which blends nicely with Parks’ story.
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