Green Hornet #11 - Mobile Edition

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Green Hornet #11
By Hervé St-Louis
December 22, 2010 - 22:46

Dynamite Entertainment
Writer(s): Phil Hester
Penciller(s): Jonathan Lau
Colourist(s): Ivan Nunes
Letterer(s): Troy Peteri
Cover Artist(s): Alex Ross, Phil Hester, Jonathan Lau
$3.99 US

The Green Hornet and Kato are facing the Latino gang Los Hijos de la muerte. This gang is not afraid of death and taking lives from people on their turf. This bodes badly for the Green Hornet, as these new criminals are not afraid of him at all. Will the Green Hornet and Kato die before they can stop these new foes?

Hester pulled such a prank in the past after he took over the writing chores in other comic book series and proved that he was as competent a writer as his old buddy Kevin Smith. Hester’s story is actually more interesting and less commoditized than Smith’s. Here, he explores new grounds and new villains. In Smith’s story, it was all a packaged movie script with the cues for empathy and drama placed at the appropriate time, but without any gut feeling. Hester doesn’t do that with his script. He creates a riveting about the Green Hornet and ally Kato that’s worth reading. The characters’ personality hasn’t changed much, but they are far more interesting to look at now. As for the villains, they are not as well defined, but I’m not worried at all. This story has shown in but a few pages that Hester will surprise readers issue after issue. Let’s sit back and enjoy the read.

I’m not sure if Hester even helped with the breakdowns of the storytelling this issue, but Lau’s work seems more dynamic than usual. The figures look much better than they did a few issues back. My only criticism is that I feel he needs a thicker inking over his pencils to strengthen the characters on the page. But it seems that now inkers was hired for this book and that it was sent directly to the Photoshop colourist for treatment. If that’s the case, that would annoy me greatly as comic book inking is an essential skill and part of why comic books look so good. Skipping this production step in favour of the colourists fixing the work is a short term gain that doesn’t help to highlight the artwork and make it more solid for a viewer.

Rating: 9/10