Solo: The Deluxe Edition

Solo was a limited run of comics consisting of a dozen 48-page issues, with each issue being illustrated by a different artist. Some of the biggest names in the biz were recruited and given creative freedom to tell whatever stories they wanted, using DC characters as they saw fit. In some cases the artists also wrote their pieces but they also worked with writers. This Deluxe Edition collects the complete run.

Here’s the line-up:

#1 Tim Sale (with Jeph Loeb, Brian Azzarello, Darwyn Cooke, and Diana Schutz)

#2 Richard Corben (with John Arcudi)

#3 Paul Pope

#4 Howard Chaykin

#5 Darwyn Cooke

#6 Jordi Bernet (with John Arcudi, Joe Kelly, Andrew Helfer, Chuck Dixon, and Brian Azzarello)

#7 Mike Allred (with Laura Allred and Lee Allred)

#8 Teddy Kristiansen (with Neil Gaiman and Steven Seagle)

#9 Scott Hampton (with John Hitchcock)

#10 Damion Scott (with Rob Markmam and Jennifer Carcano)

#11 Sergio Aragonés (with Mark Evanier)

#12 Brendan McCarthy (with Howard Hallis, Steve Cook, Trevor Goring, Robbie Morrison, Tom O’Connor and Jono Howard)

I’ll say right away that the art here is great. I have my favourites and others that I didn’t like nearly as much, but I have to acknowledge that even the ones that weren’t my thing were highly creative. As a portfolio of some of the best people working at the time (the series ran from 2004 to 2006) it’s a treasure chest.

That said, I really didn’t think much of most of the stories. They’re all over the map in terms of genre and tone, even within some of the individual issues. And a lot of the time they just felt like flimsy excuses for the art. Which I guess you should expect in what was a consciously art-driven project. Darwyn Cooke won an Eisner Award for his issue and I had no disagreement with that, as in my notes I had it down as one of the best. But overall I thought there were more misses than hits when it came to what was actually being illustrated, and I can’t say that any of the stories stayed with me for long.

Just as a final note, I have no idea why, for such a deluxe hardcover edition, they put Mike Allred’s drawing of Batman doing the Batusi on the cover. That’s no way to sell a book.

Graphicalex