Colin Panetta’s second installment of Dead Man Holiday is a surreal sojourn through a bleak world of wild science and spooky creatures. Akin to watching Scooby-Doo on acid, Panetta’s story follows the adventures of Thad Planck, a kind of security guard that patrols the supernatural by day, while dreaming of a girl named Bethany by night. Thad has a penitent for falling into weird situations, as being chased through sewers by skeletons, diving out of windows, and chatting with random freaks on the street all happen to him on a regular basis.
The second issue of Dead Man Holiday, numbered as “-2” (the premiere issues was “-3”), is independently published under the moniker of “Mysterious Transmissions.” But there’s nothing mystifying about Panetta’s strongest quality as a comics storyteller: his artwork. The creator’s talent as an artist carried me from panel to panel, page after page. Starkly black and white, Panetta’s illustrations are clearly produced from a guy confident in his craft. Aside from his artistic ability, Panetta also knows how to layout a page like a pro. His panels are sequentially powerful and the artistic flow is excellent.
The main and major problem I had with Dead Man Holiday is the actual story—I couldn’t really find it. While Panetta’s art is something wonderful, it’s completely lacking a narrative to explain what’s going on. Calling a comic “indie” is one thing, but it’s not a blank check to turn a story into something only the creator understands, while leaving readers out in the cold. The first half of the second issue, for example, is fun and wild, but I didn’t know or understand the context of what Thad was exactly accomplishing by inspecting haunted subterranean halls. What’s worse, I didn’t even know the main character’s name until browsing the comic’s Myspace page for some enlightenment on the basic plot.
At best, Panetta’s Dead Man Holiday is a misunderstood story leading up to something intriguing and fun that will shame my critique. At worst, he’s an incredibly talented artist with a true knack for sequential art, but painfully lacking in the script-writing department. Solid weird/speculative fiction offers its readership a window into another world, demonstrating the new reality through showing instead of telling. But currently, Panetta’s story is doing neither, not even offering readers a basic plot premise—it’s simply under-explained.
It’s my fear that Panetta understands completely what’s going on, but he’s also assuming that his readers do, too, when we really don’t. His talent is something to admire, as shown in Dead Man Holiday #-2, but that same talent is being weighted down by storytelling that needs a heavy coat of polish.
This comic book review originally appeared on Comic News on 17 March 2009.
