Rifters #3 // Review
It’s a vehicular death. And since this is San Francisco in 1900, the vehicle in question a wagon. And since the dialogue is exceptionally bad, one of the time cops says that the victim is “more wagon than man.” What else could it possibly be but Rifters #3? The writing team of Brian Posehn and Joe Trohman are once again...tryin’ to be funny in another sci-fi action comedy procedural. Artist Chris Johnson and colorist Mark Englert are once again corralled into working on an awful script and turning it into something that’s almost readable. It’s not all bad, though. There’s probably a good story in the series somewhere.
The death was likely a homicide. This puts it well out of the jurisdiction of a couple of cops who really shouldn’t have the kind of authority they do and really...have no business trying to maintain peace in the all-too-delicate structure of the space-time continuum or whatever. The fact that they’re not actually cleared to work on the homicide doesn’t mean they’re not going to do so. There’s probably a good reason for that, but it sort of gets lost when one of them ends-up accidentally killing a cultist kid in San Francisco in 1969.
The cross-time murders seem interesting. Theoretically there could really be something there that might be cool for a competent pair of writers to work on. And there ARE some very clever possibilities in time traveling cop comedy that might be able to work their way into the substance of the narrative with a pair of competent writers working on the series. It’s just too bad that y’know...that’s not what’s going on here. I mean...it’s possible that something might materialize in the weirdly disjointed parade of events that Posehn and Trohman are working on. It’s just too bad that it happens to be that case that Posehn and Trohman are the ones who are writing this particular script.
Johnson and Englert do a brilliant job wit the art. Really. There’s an earthbound realism about the world of Rifters that’s a lot of fun to get into. There’s a real sharpness to it that ends up being a lot of fun visually. Johnson DOES seem to be given the direction to totally exaggerate the arguments. Even casual frustrated disagreements between time cops end-up feeling like something more competent police would have to come-in and deal with. It’s all well and good to exaggerate arguments for comic effect, but when every single one looks like it’s going to end in homicide, it feels a little tedious.
All its shortcomings aside, Rifters DOES look really, really good on the page. Englert’s colors provide decent depth and texture. Johnson has a clear distinction between settings in what looks like really well-researched renderings of a few different eras that all come together in a visually enjoyable story that is this tedious. Not since Lee and Kirby or Lee and Ditko or...really Stan Lee and ANYONE has there been dialogue this bad matched-up with art that’s this good. It’s kind of weird, really.
