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Veena, The Expanding Spiral Vol. 2, #4 Fall 2001 32 pages, black & white, color covers, $3.25/$4.95 CAN _______________________________________________________ I like time loop stories. Think of time as not being linear but perhaps a series of loops that intersect at a point or points. Suppose at one such point you could go back in time and then move forward again to that same point. And after that go back to another point and go forward. Sort of like Bill Murray in the movie "Ground Hog's Day" you would be learning from your experience and changing things along the way the next time. This story is like that but in the case of the time traveler he is actually going back to points in his own life at a much earlier age, retaining the knowledge of his years yet to be relived. He accomplishes this with the help of a genie, looking a lot like Barbara Eden, from a bottle he finds at that nexus in time. His wish, over and over is to relive his life from a certain age, but to keep his knowledge as an adult. His first adult life stemmed from life as one who was not part of the in crowd, who loved comics and sci-fi and even wrote his own fanzine. His music was not the accepted norm, he had failed relationships, he was not happy with how things turned out. The genie and the wish could change that. He would make things right. He could not be the same person. He would know who to avoid, who not to miss getting to know, how to make his life more interesting than before. Time after time he found things to do over or try again and the whole story is told as a narrative to a girl he is trying to impress in a bar, Veena. As the story expands they begin to drink more and it becomes a contest as to who will last to the end of the story or pass out first from the booze. The ending is just too cool to give away, and reminiscent of the classic Twilight Zone episode endings. Superb! The other major story is called COLD FLUID. It is a tale of Major Valor, a Captain America clone on purpose. The story of his origin is told as he visits his "second father", the man who made him a super soldier from a scrawny kid. The hook is the super serum made him the ultimate fighting machine was also used on experiments with the dead. In fact it was used to raise Frankenstein's monster. Now the dying scientist wants to bestow a gift on the Major and the monster, the gift of immortality with another serum. Well naturally he will comply with the dying man's wish and seeks out the monster, his "brother". But the reaction to the gift is not what you might expect, and their mutual fate is fitting. A serial sprinkled about the back of the book is called JOHN STAR, done in the style of a Flash Gordon strip. It involves Hitler returning to life via brain transplant and it also involves technology stolen from the Martians in The War of the Worlds. It is fast paced and lots of fun. Theriault has a pleasant art style and a great story telling ability. The diverse nature of the components of this issue attest to his skill to entertain in a number of ways. David LeBlanc, Editor Comic Book Network Electronic Magazine http://members.aol.com/ComicBkNet http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ComicBookNetworkEmag

Veena, The Expanding Spiral Vol. 2, #4 Fall 2001 32 pages, black & white, color covers, $3.25/$4.95 CAN _______________________________________________________ Damn it all. I was under the impression that this book was the first issue and that I would be able to start off fresh. Turns out that this is #4 of the second volume, so he's been at it for a while. Still, I must be doing OK if my worst problem is that I have to see what happened before this, and even that isn't absolutely essential because the story doesn't seem to have been continued anywhere. I mostly just want to because I liked the comic. Eric wrote to me almost write away many months ago when I first started Xerox Army and has been nothing but good people, so I've been preparing myself to be impressed with this for a while now. I should have broken down and gotten other issues before this, but this whole "being too poor to eat" thing really limits my options these days. Anyway, enough of the rambling. The first story in this sticks with me the most upon reflection. A man meets Veena in a bar and tells her about how he's been reliving his life over and over again with the help of a genie, but he just can't seem to get everything quite right. Great finish to this. I wish I knew the background to this character though. As far as I know all she does is sit in bars drinking. Cold Fluid, about a Captain America like guy hunting down Frankenstein to help him live longer, harkened (can I use that in this century) back to the EC Comics days, except for the fact that the hero doesn't do so well in this one. Oh come on, I didn't give anything away. You can tell all that from the first page. Lots if little pieces in this too. A running serial with a man trapped in Hitler's body (also goes back to the pulp days of comics), some dream stuff and a story about the "future". A well-rounded book, all kinds of good stuff in here. I would have liked a little more Veena, so I guess it's my own damned fault for not having more of them. I'll fix that soon enough. This is a full size comic, so you should be able to find it if you have a halfway decent comic store anywhere near you. If not, visit his website for ordering info. Whitey on the Optical Sloth website

Opticla Sloth

Veena 1-2-3 _______________________________________________________ I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up Veena, a self-published comic from Canada. What I found was a pleasant mixed bag of adventure and slice-of-life comics—in many ways, it's a little something for everyone. Each issue of Veena has two distinct sections. The first is a feature starring our very own title character, Veena. The first three issues of the book tell the story of "Veena and the Time Machine", centering around our protagonist finding a pair of sunglasses that allow the wearer to see Native American spirits. At the same time, each issue also contains a number of real-life stories, some of them autobiographical, ranging from strange phone calls to meeting with old friends. One of the things I like the most about Veena is how Éric Thériault is able to switch styles depending on his story. The art style he uses on the "Veena" stories isn't necessarily the same one for some of the slice-of-life stories, for instance; the art is designed to fit the stories. There are some really nice touches in the art—I love the appearance of Bob Dobbs (of the Church of the Subgenius fame) in the main story, for instance. The comic is a nice mix—as much as I liked the main feature (which grew on me really quickly and I could see showing up in some form or another from Vertigo), in some ways I appreciated the back-ups even more; they let Thériault stretch his legs creatively. Even the back-up story for #3, which stars Veena as well, is a strong step forward. Future issues of Veena are going to feature complete-in-one-issue stories (not all of them starring Veena herself), which I think is a good thing. The emotional punch of "Veena and the Time Machine" wouldn't have worked nearly as well if I'd read it over the space of half a year. There are a couple of rough spots here and there, but nothing major; I hope Thériault continues Veena, which has thoroughly hooked me. Hopefully we'll see more of his work before long. iREVIEWS by Greg McElhatton greg@gregmce.com   Veena 3 _______________________________________________________ Veena and Professor Bob travel to the past to learn the secret of the mysterious sunglasses, but be careful when you're searching for answers, because you might learn something you really didn't want to learn. In another story, Veena's being "stalked" by an invisible peeping tom, who wants to do a lot more than peep. What will she do with this new threat? Veena is an interesting character. She's kind of like an adventurer but also a tough as nails, doesn't really give a crap type of gal. Almost like a mix of Emma Peel's personality and Jenny Spark's — although Veena doesn't have any special powers — at least none that I can see. She appears to be a Nancy Drew of sorts going on different adventures and solving different mysteries. However, she's the R rated version of Nancy, because she solves a few "naughty" mysteries. Theriault is an interesting creator telling extremely different types of stories. I'm not sure what to make of Veena, but I'm pretty sure I'll give her adventures another try. I'd like to see what else Theriault will do with the character. I'm also curious to see how the Sunglasses adventure began, because this issue was the end of that tale. He did summarize in a few sentences at the top of the story what was going on, but I'd like to see it for myself. Story aside, the artwork was pretty good. This comic is from 1999 and I'm guessing that Theriault's probably improved a lot since then, so I'm not going to point out a few of the artistic nuances until I see a more recent work. I will say that it was nice artwork and didn't detract from the story at all. For some reason, this series just didn't click with me. It's not bad, I just couldn't get into it. Maybe I need to see another issue. Somehow, I don't think I'm the target audience for this series. Jennifer M. Contino on Sequential Tart

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