Jack Cross #3 - DC (2005)

I really want to like this comic book but each issue makes it harder and harder. I enjoyed the first issue but the second didn't do much for me. The primary complaint I had about the comic as a whole is that Gary Erskine isn't conveying the action scenes well at all. His compositions are static. There's absolutely no sense that the people are moving. They look like they're posing for a photo comic.

Issue #3 has more action than the first two issues combined. It's one big action scene with a little dialogue thrown in as connective tissue. Which, unfortunately, means that this issue falls the flattest.

Splat.

There's a scene involving a couple of helicopters which would have been very exciting if I could have figured out what the hell was going on. Same thing goes for the fight scene depicted on the cover. Flat.

Jack Cross is written to be a man of action. Literally. He sees what needs to be done and he's not afraid to do it. There is no separation between thought and action for him. That's what Warren Ellis intends to get across, anyway. He gets no help from Erskine.

Not that Ellis is completely off the hook, here. I am one hell of a Warren Ellis fanboy. He's one of the reasons I want to write comics. I want to make people feel about characters I create the way he has made me feel. However, this story and these characters haven't hooked me. It's issue 3. This story just isn't my cup of tea and the slow art simply isn't doing it any favors.

I'll pick up #4 to see how the story ends but after that I'm dropping it from my hold box.

At least Desolation Jones and Fell continue to rock.