BORN WITH A PENIS: A review of A DRIFTER MIDNIGHT

This book is rather heavily endowed with a subtitle: GIDEON CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS CONTINUING ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF THE SUPERNATURAL. Sounds pretty awe-inspiring, eh?



Too bad it doesn’t live up to expectations. Gideon Charlemagne is a pretty cool name, though. Yet he, also, does not live up to expectations. He’s supposed to be an integral member of a team of supernatural investigators—the Brotherhood—but he really doesn’t DO ANYTHING. More on that in a moment.


When a manticore is discovered in Mason, IL, the team is called in to look into the matter. Led by Professor Woodhouse, a Yeti who prefers climate control to cold weather, and accompanied by the newbie, Agent Cooper, they delve into the underground chambers of a Mason farmhouse in their search for a supposedly mythological creature.


Gideon is supposed to be a wise-cracking ass-kicker, but when it comes down to actually doing stuff, Woodhouse is by far a greater hero. He gets shit done while Gideon is off in his own world. He’s got the wise-cracking down, but the ass-kicking? The most we see of his abilities is in a throwaway moment early in the story, when he’s being sacrificed by a Haitian voodoo priest and manages to get out of it by producing a gun which he must have hidden in his ass, because all he was dressed in at the time were his Jockeys.


The story has some good points, though. The humor is well done, and Agent Cooper’s first day on the job is pretty hilarious. With a few sly horror references (the best being a tip of the hat to Kolchak), writer Brendan Dortch firmly shows that he at least knows what he’s talking about. And the last page, where Woodhouse sums everything up about manticores, is pretty cool. Yet the protagonist is so poorly chosen, it takes away from the story.


Artist Mat Festa makes up for this a bit. When it comes to people, he doesn’t really do a good job, but when it comes to otherworldly things, like the manticore, for example, he does shockingly well. It’s like he was made to illustrate weird things, not regular stuff like human beings and cars. It is very clear that he’s still learning how to use his skills, which he perfected with his appearance in the most recent PRODUCT OF SOCIETY, as A DRIFTER MIDNIGHT is one of his earlier works. As an example of how he kind of fails with people, it’s hard to tell if Agent Cooper is male or female. It isn’t until later, when one of the characters refers to him as a “he” that we know.


So this book has its flaws, but it also has a lot of promise, too. Perhaps Gideon will become more useful with other installments of the tale. As things stand now, he isn’t much of a “best hope against the things that go bump in the night,” as the back of the book proclaims. He has a difficult enough time staying conscious. But he’s got a good mastery of the wise-crack, and he does make a hell of a TWIN PEAKS reference.


A DRIFTER MIDNIGHT
or, GIDEON CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS CONTINUING ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF THE SUPERNATURAL
Written by Brendan Dortch
Illustrated by Mat Festa
62 pages
$15.00