Review: Let’s start out simple. I liked this issue overall. There are three stories in this issue: Guilty Verdict, Home Fires Burning, and Homecoming. The first story focuses on the character known as The Fall, a vigilante that is judge, jury and executioner when the justice system fails. In this story The Fall goes after a mob boss who’s gotten off the hook for several crimes he committed.
The Fall comes face to face with the mobster’s attorney, who pleads for Fall to kill him after helping so many scum of the Earth get off the hook throughout his 50 year career. The Fall doesn’t, however, telling the man that while he himself is a terrible human being the attorney never committed any crimes himself by legally helping all these terrible people escape jail.
As he goes to find the mobster he finds him laying in bed having been murdered presumably by his attorney and when The Fall returns the attorney shoots himself in the head after no one else would do it for him. While story itself is told in a simplistic way what it’s really about is the human folly of letting those events you’re not proud of catch up to you, and eventually letting them eat you alive.
The Fall was not in the wrong for not helping this man die, but he was also unaware of the atrocity the man had committed to put himself in that situation. Nor is the man wrong for wanting The Fall to take him out, this “hero” who does this kind of stuff for a living. In the end, both parties got what they desired, and a well written tragedy was made out of it.
Home Fires Burning brings The Fall face-to-face with Dead Man, as I’m going to call him for the rest of this review, who is attempting to take down the same scumbag who once took out his partner and himself when he was a Police Officer. Dead Man calls himself such because he feels like a genuine zombie walking around, never allowed happiness, and always looking repulsive behind his mask.
Obviously this puts him at odds with The Fall who will not allow Dead Man to kill the man. Of course a bomb that Dead Man triggers goes off and kills his planned victim anyways, leaving The Fall with yet another failed mission to save someone from another’s folly. What I like about this story is the reveal that Dead Man waiting around to snipe the man was all an act, and the real threat was a bomb shaped like a Jack-o-Lantern. It was a nicely executed twist to the story, and both Dead Man and The Fall work off of one another really well, and I also liked that even by the end of this story neither considered the other a friend. Allowing for them to come to odds once again in the future, maybe someday.
Finally there’s Homecoming which is the longest of the three tales. It takes place after Home Fires Burning, but reads like it comes before. It sees Dead Man perusing the city, attempting to figure out why he returned to it in the first place after exacting his revenge. He goes on several little adventures with those around him, none of which ever turn out well. This story really sets Dead Man up to be an anti-hero, someone who attempts to often do the right thing but is never opposed to doing terrible things if it meant achieving what you needed to achieve.
By the end of the story Dead Man comes to the conclusion that he returned to the city as a regular to find himself and rekindle the flames to fight on in this world. What he also finds is a new drug called ‘A Pocket Full of Sunshine’ – clever name folks – which begins a war on drugs that I’m sure is to come soon, but definitely not in this book.
Overall the stories themselves were either excellent or decent, they were drawn pretty well by Brandon Spicer. I wouldn’t be opposed to eventually learning more about both The Fall and Dead Man through their other stories however this was a good primer to introduce you to them.
Final Score: 4.5 Spicer Brothers’ Trade Secrets out of 5
PLB Spotlight on the Spicer Brothers #1
PLB Comics
Writer: B. David Spicer
Artist: Brandon Spicer
Letterer: Jason Dufendach
Reviewer: Derrick Crow
Summary: This issue focuses entirely on short stories from the two Spicer brothers, Brian and Brandon Spicer of PLB comics who work together to turn out their comics. The short stories collected in here feature two of their established characters: The Fall, and… Dead Man? The name of the second character is never actually stated. But I would assume that is a good guess as any.
