Haunted City #2
Written by Chap Taylor and Peter Johnson
Art by Michael Ryan
Colors by Kelsey Shannon with Peter Steigerwald and Beth Sotelo
Letters by Josh Reed
Covers by Michael Ryan, Alex Konat, and Micah Gunnell
Aspen Comics
Release Date: February 1, 2012
Cover Price: $3.50

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Haunted City #2, but whatever it was, I didn’t find it. In fact, I didn’t find much of anything here. Writers Chap Taylor and Peter Johnson kind of fall short on this issue. Having never read the first issue I went in blind, and even though I read the recap page, I didn’t have any idea what the book I was reading was about. Fast forward to the end of the issue, I still don’t.

What starts off as a police drama ends up a VERY different tale by the end of the comic. Personally, I thought the police drama was 100 times more interesting than what the book turned out to be. It’s a very confusing issue full of flashbacks that maybe should’ve been told in their own separate issue.

Michael Ryan has long been a favorite artist of mine. Unfortunately he’s wasted here. Sure, his pencils are great, but he doesn’t really get to draw anything all that spectacular, which is a shame. And the colors on this issue almost ruin his art. Don’t know what they were going for, I’m assuming it was some kind of mood, but the pencils are buried in horrible mud-like tones and shades.

All in all, not a great comic. The only thing that it has going for it is that it FEELS like an Aspen book. You can easily see this taking place in the same universe as Fathom or any other of the Aspen books. I recommend that you skip the single issue(s). Maybe it’ll read better in trade.