ACTION, OHIO is off to a nice, solid start. I like the Silver-Age look to the art; Paul Salvi seems to be working together the cleaner aspects of the DC look at the time with the flow of the classic newspaper strips of that time and earlier (I’m thinking Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates, the Phantom, etc). There’s nothing startlingly original about the page layouts at this stage of the game, but I like what I see. Writer Neil Kleid has a nice high concept — secret city of super-humans spawned during and after World War Two – and seems to be headed in a nice direction with it (only one person outside of town knows the town exists, until something happens to inform the world). I’d like to see where this goes. Rating:

HANNIBAL GOES TO ROME is likewise off to a good start, in a completely different mold: that of the historically accurate comedy – surely a niche market if ever there was one. Writer Brendan McGinley takes the very real Punic Wars and Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps and gives the details a humorous twist. Some of his jokes are tried and true (as when the young Hannibal’s father asks him who he hates and he replies “Rome. But soon I’ll be a teenager and I’ll hate everyone.”), others are subtle and original – I chuckled several times a page on both scores. Artist Mauro Vargas works in fine detail with comic exaggeration, not an easy trick to pull off. I’m also interested in seeing where this goes. Rating:

Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to offer up a paragraph on every current entry in the Zuda competition, deadline is looming and I need to get this off to our hard-working moderator. Definitely check these two series out!

May 2008 Zuda Comic Competition

Reviews by Anthony R. Cardno

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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