Elephantmen #1
“See the Elephant”

Writer: Richard Starkings
Artist: Moritat

Most of you out there that will be picking this new series up are going to mock me as you read this review. First off, I’ve never read an issue of Hip Flask or any of the other one-shots by Richard Starkings and Comicraft. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I’m not cool or anything. Keep in mind up until a few months ago I spent most of my time and money of Marvel and DC titles. I’ve been branching out in order to be a better comic book geek.

One thing that always concerns me as I read something that already has a following of fans is how easy can a new reader pick up on what’s gone on before. Elephantmen is a new series but there have been some previous one-shots that have established these characters and this time period. There’s a lot that’s already happened and I’m very hesitant to read something if there’s not something that helps bring in new readers. This issue does just that – brings new readers up to speed and then leaves you at the end of the issue ready for what’s to come. That’s how you should do a first issue. Build on the present while filling in those blanks that a large majority of your readers are going to have.

There’s not a lot of story per se in this issue. Ebony meets up with a young girl who does just what a small child does – asks a ton of questions. There’s that innocence a child has when asking an adult questions and Starkings does a good job providing some history to Ebony’s life while showing he’s evolved from those times in his life. The problem is when we get to the end of the story. Ebony has evolved and learned from the past. He’s still dealing with it, but he’s not being ignorant to it. Not everyone can say that after this issue ends.

Moritat’s visuals in this issue are just great. There’s a great deal of simplicity to the style without loosing any of the details that are necessary. The strongest point in Moritat’s style is the amazing use of the characters’ eyes in each page. There’s so much emotion in especially Ebony’s eyes that you can almost read the emotions without the dialogue backing it up.

I’m a big fan of clean artwork. I don’t like a lot of line work that over exposes a page. There are artists out there that I like that get a little too sketchy with their work and want to throw in just a little too many lines and it just ruins the art. Moritat’s art is great and the coloring for this issue just adds that much more to the line work. If anything I’ll be back for the next issue to see how this art style continues to be used to tell these stories.

I’ll be honest in saying I hesitated a bit before reading this issue because I knew I’d want to review it. I was afraid that I’d get really lost with the characters and have little to no connection with them. Starkings has done a really good job bringing me into this story and making me want to know more about the characters. I’m probably going to look for those one-shots I missed the first time around. Elephantmen #1 is a really solid issue that is a perfect platform to launch an incredible amount of stories from and I’m looking forward to reading as many of them as I can.

Take a chance, folks. Get out there any buy this book.