CURRENT - The Losers, Book 2

In my ever continuing duty to review materials for School Library Journal, they happened to send me a little ditty called The Losers, Book 2 by Andy Diggle. Which is slightly odd timing, seeing as how I just saw the film based on the graphic novel series like two weeks ago. I was thinking that maybe this collection would be some sort of sequel to the film. But as they often do in Hollywood, it looks the storyline got changed around a bunch. While the origin of the team happens at the beginning of the movie, it isn't until many, many issues into the comic book that you find out how the losers "died." Aisha, who was played by Zoe Saldana in the film, is also a much darker, harder character in the graphic novel. In the film, she is presented as this shady outsider with resources, who uses her sexiness to ultimately get what she wants. Aisha basically kills so many people in the comic that they give her single issues where she can just cut loose and go ape sh@#$ crazy. I half love reading her, while the other half is mostly just afraid.

I'm glad that this title was randomly selected for me to review, because like Brian Wood's DMZ, its comic book literature I really should be reading but probably wouldn't have. Left to my own devices, it's all X-Men and Batman. I still think the superhero genre of comic books is the biggest, and let's face it: librarians don't really want to admit that. I will, and I keep reading stuff by people like Scott Lobdell and Peter David because ultimately it's pretty awesome. The last issue of X-Factor? It was all character development. In a superhero comic. With my Vintage Series, you guys are seeing a lot of comics that I loved as a kid. I also get to justify why I loved it, which is a fun exercise. Yeah, things can sometimes be overly complicated. But that's part of the fun.

Back to The Losers. It's a fun series. Like DMZ, I can't really recommend it for young kids (even though I know they will read it anyway) because of all the f-bombs and bloody body parts panel-to-panel. The series definitely explores a lot of the more "Huh?" moments I had watching the film, including giving an explanation for why the sniper character really doesn't speak. One of the downsides is, I'm calling him the "sniper character" because I keep forgetting everyone's name. The girl is Aisha, the hero is Clay, and the bad guy is Max. The rest of the team sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, except for Jensen 'cause that dude is HILARIOUS! Anyway, at 280 pages, it's a dense read. I'm about halfway through it. I'm enjoying it immensely, and figured I would recommend it as something to order for your library or just read for fun.