High Stakes Adventure #1

by Sidra Roberts, age 16

High Stakes Adventure is a well put together small press title. High Stakes Adventures is co-written by Kurt Hathaway and Shannon Denton and the art is done by Shannon Denton. It contains four stories, which, I assume, are to be the four ongoing series of the comic book. This is only one of the ways High Stakes Adventures reminds me of the older pulp comics.

The first feature, The Big Game: Featuring the Shotgun Kid, is Western Ranger meets Karate Kid. I’ll admit my biases right off the bat, I read the first two panels and had this overwhelming feeling that I was not going to like this story. Much to my chagrin and pleasure I was horribly wrong. The Big Game Featuring the Shotgun Kid tells the tale of a Texas Ranger who one night over a hundred years ago entered a town called Resurrection, Texas. Resurrection was a supposedly growing town, but oddly it appears to be a ghost town. There is something foul in Resurrection. The Ranger runs into this thing and fires a few shots into him. These shots buy him time to run. The Ranger falls into a spell, which is being cast my an elderly Asian gentleman, Sushi. This spell gives the Texas Ranger a millennium life span and the name of Shotgun Kid. The story is beautiful exposition, and leaves you wanting to know what will happen in the next story. The art is done in animated style, which is a very effective way to portray this story. The art is in fact a little too good during a couple of gory panels.

The second feature, Giant Fighters: A Plague Among Us!, is a science fiction story about a group of young officers, whose worlds were destroyed by the mind controlled giants and are now fighting to protect other worlds from similar catastrophes. I was severely disappointed in Giant Fighters. The premise has potential, but the execution was flawed. The characters and the civilization that they are trying to help seem a little too cliche. The characterization was weak, but that’s more that likely due to then amount of characters introduced. It would have been better to have focused on one or two characters as opposed to the whole set. The plot of the story is not bad but, I have one major complain. When civilization refuses their help and orders the Giant Fighters off their planet, all of the sudden a renegade member of this civilization, shows up in an armors tank to take the team to giants. Can we say dues ex machina? Giant Fighters shows real promise in the months to come and with some character development it could become something truly great. Probably the best art within the whole comic is done in Giant Fighters. It has wonderful alien landscapes, aliens, special effects. Overall the most visually impressive story of High Stakes Adventure.

The third feature, S.E.A. Force: Glass Hammer, is an underwater science fiction story. " Martha Thompson was having a very BAD week..." the vert first line of the story and it immediately grabbed my attention. I loved this story it honestly reminds me of the stories from the old Adventure comics. S.E.A. (Submersible Exploration Ark) Force is exploring underwater caverns and they have been for the last twelve days. Martha, an oceanographic biologist, is outside the submarine looking around. Suddenly the S.E.A loses her communication signal. Her husband and two of the boat colleagues Dirk and Derek go out in search of her. While in search of Martha they discover an air pocket with a underwater civilization. In this underwater world they discover a Soviet submarine from the Cold War era. As it turns out a demented soviet captain is controlling the underwater people by force. The story is well written. It has that old gung-ho, fun feeling that the old Adventure comics had. I like that light science fiction feeling. The art for this story is awesome too. The underwater civilization’s pyramids appear to be Buddhist in origin at the cave opening. Further in the story the outside of the temples look like Mayan temples. I like the attention to detail that the artist pays to the background.

The fourth and final feature, Danger Squad, is a story written in diary format. The protagonist, Jennifer St. John, is searching for her father across odd arctic terrains. She has put together a team to find her father. This team is for the most part well-experienced. They encounter a shaman who sics his big stone friend a.k.a. the living statue on the team. The story is written convincingly from a female point of view. The decision to have one art panel at the being depicting the main action of the story is a purely brilliant method of story telling.

I would recommend High Stakes Adventures to anyone of any age, gender, race...basically anyone. High Stakes Adventures packs an interesting, entertaining punch with a flare that gets the read completely wrapped up in the story.

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Text Copyright © 1999 Sidra Roberts

sidra@flash.net

See Sidra's web page at: http://www.hal-pc.org/~probts/Sidra.html