Grip: The Strange World of Men #2
Story:
Art:

Written and Art by Gilbert Hernandez
Colors by Pamela Rambo
Letters by John Costanza

Published by DC/Vertigo.
Price: $2.50

My Verdict: Dropping It.

Let me see if I can synopsize this in some way that makes sense. Bear with me. Mike Chang is a guy who is wearing a suit that probably doesn't belong to him. He's also wearing skin that might or might not belong to him. Then there's Tigre, a shapely woman who has a boyfriend of diminutive stature. Tigre also has a problem in that she seems to change her height often. Also, there's a grandmother that the aforementioned suit belonged to. And the skin is now in the clutches of a cyclopean young girl named Echo who wants to take over the world, whose mother is some kind of ninja. And...oh bother.

It used to be that I could pick up a random new Vertigo book because I knew it would quirk to some satisfactory end--but the last time that worked was the six-issue Proposition Player mini-series, and that's been a while back. But the problem with a lot of Vertigo books these days is that they don't know how to be weird towards some kind of point. They just throw a bunch of weird stuff against the wall and hope that something sticks. Or worse, they have all the weird stuff, and they do actually have some kind of method to their madness, but they can't keep the reader interested enough to stick around and see what all the hubbub is about.

Such is the case with Grip. I don't understand the title, I don't understand the characters, and the bizarre revelation at the end of this issue really doesn't make me want to spend the additional $7.50 for the remaining issues to find out what the hell is going on. And...look, call me fascist, but I'm not a fan of Gilbert Hernandez' style of art. Especially when I spent the first issue thinking that Tigre was much taller than her boyfriend, then this issue they're the same height--although in the splash at the beginning of the second issue, she's taller. Huh? Sure, if I had gotten on board with prior work like Love and Rockets I might be better suited to enjoy the art. But it just doesn't work for me.

Basically, fans of Hernandez should stick with the book--and anyone else who's enjoying it--but me, I'm fleeing.