Drawn From Perspective: Wolverton: Thief of Impossible Objects #1 & #2

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By. J. Paul Schiek — I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s a fairly rare thing for me to look at an idea or intellectual property and grow legitimately jealous that I wasn’t the one to think of it. Okay, well, it probably happens more often than I’m letting on, but in the case of Wolverton: Thief Of Impossible Objects, it’s been a hard one to let go, let alone forget. I mean, look at it for Pete’s sakes?! It’s a comic book about a jewel thief who is six parts Westley from Princess Bride, and four parts literally every David Niven role ever. He’s extraordinary, he’s a gentleman, and he takes his leagues the same way the San Diego Padres take their chances of ever winning a World Series (20,000 under). 

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Drawn From Perspective: Thumbs #5 is a sneaky Dark Knight Returns successor

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By J. Paul Schiek — I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the sort of classic-but-wholly-unintelligible books, like Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Apart from the appealing premise of an aged and tired Bruce Wayne returning from retirement, the book is probably better known for its (at the time, at least, if not now) envelope-pushing visuals. Bearing that in mind, I had had an itch in the back of my head each and every time I picked up an issue of the Sean Lewis-penned Thumbs, with art by the incomparable Hayden Sherman. Or, indeed, when I picked up a previously read issue for a second glance or full immersion. While comprised of its own characters and settings, and festooned with its own directions and ideas, Thumbs, to eschew any undue comparisons, is not the logical successor to DKR…it is actually a usurper that steals its throne entirely.

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Drawn From Perspective: ‘Every single line is there for a reason’, praise for Sean Lewis, Hayden Sherman’s THUMBS

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By J. Paul Schiek — There are really three ways to read a comic book. Probably the most prevalent is as a form of entertainment. The second is in the name of didacticism itself, wherein one hopes to gain much the same insight to the human condition that they would get from a classic or even contemporary literary novel. Thirdly, there’s a group who read comics simply to have an experience. It’s not that entertainment and didacticism aren’t experiences in and of themselves, but this third group is looking for something that really absorbs readers, pulling them down to the very surface of the world the story is describing.

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