Tomio’s Want List – The Last Resort by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray

Though I’ve never met him, Jimmy Palmiotti and me go back to when the guy was one half of the smokin’ hot art team featuring now Marvel EIC Joe Quesada and himself. I’m talking about oh so sweet VALIANT memories like early Ninjak and the cover of X-O Manowar#0, and about Wizard’s lauded creator owned Ash. It should be said that as an inker, I think he brought out Joe Q, better than even (who I’d call legendary) Kevin Nowlan did on The Sword of Azrael.

How much faith do I have in Jimmy P? I can’t stand zombie projects. I’m the guy on earth who thinks Walking Dead is readable but average. It’s probably safe to say that if Simon Peg isn’t in it, and it’s zombie focused, the ceiling for my appreciation is that I don’t hate it. Same with Vampires, as unless you are doing something interesting like China Mieville’s The Tain (now that I think about it he has a pretty cool character in his The Scar as well), I’ll pass. For the most part, Matheson already put it down when it comes to Vampires, and everything else has been more or less regurgitation (or worse, highlighting) of the basest concepts–even if to critical acclaim (True Blood).

Why the faith? I have no fondness for Westerns either. Excluding Deadwood, which is probably one of the ten best shows ever, and the scene of Paul Newman and Robert Redford going out hard, ingrained into my childhood conscious, I do not have numerous positive thought about Westerns. You know how it’s so damn trendy to love Spaghetti Westerns? I’ve lived in Italy for probably 20% of my life and I can stand those joints. Sure, Leone can drop a visual or scene on you, there is no doubt about that, but we are talking about me admiring the admittedly spectacular instances and nuance in what is still (for me) total boredom defined. Now, it’s Deadwood and Jonah Hex. Palmiotti and Gray have made Jonah Hex one of the most indispensable titles in comics today. Early on they didn’t string you along with the hope of a great Western story, they delivered with each single issue with refinement and the feeling of research in the back-drop. Hex was not a haphazard title–you don’t take on Hex unless you have stories to tell, because as awesome as Hex is, he doesn’t sell himself by simply existing. In today’s comic market, the difference between being canceled and existing in relative comfort of the lower mid-list can be word-of-mouth. You don’t can’t bad mouth Jonah Hex.

So we are several paragraph in and we haven’t reached the point, the latest entry on the Tomio Want List: The Last Resort. Being published this month by IDW, it’s a zombie title by the writing duo of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. Not in love? Let me throw out Amanda Conner and Darwyn Cooke. The former is loved by every comic fan and the latter is who every comic fans wants to be (yet neither is represented in my OA collection, which burns me every day).

    
Let’s look at Palmiotti’s and Gray’s comments about the project:

“The Last Resort is just what I want after months of super hero comics. I want my comics: R-rated; I want my sexy broads topless and I want our characters to be regular Joes that will just about do any atrocious thing to stay live. The great thing about working with IDW is that, unlike most companies, they let us write whatever we want, and we went nuts with this book.” - Jimmy Palmiotti

“The Last Resort is a mash up of all the genres that Jimmy and I love: the disaster flick, the monster movie, survival horror and the idea that people are more messed up than we’d like to admit,”

“The fact that all of this is set in what would be paradise makes it all the most entertaining. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, sorry about that, but we are trying to entertain the equally sick-minded.” – Justin Gray

Here are some preview pages:

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The biggest compliment I can give a creative team is that I’d be happy for them to helm the relaunch of my beloved VALIANT. Last year there were rumblings about a shift at DC at the highest (publishing) levels, and Palmiotti’s name was thrown around in the rumor mill, and my thought was damn, he, Gray and Conner just need to be given control of the VALIANT relaunch!

You hear me Dinesh! For now though, it’s time for a sequential sabbatical at the The Last Resort.

    
- Jay Tomio

_{Jan-ken-pon is the time traveling, force-walking, multiverse crossing column of Jay Tomio, owner of 1/3 of everything you see currently on screen, and the editor of Heliotrope. Some call him the Bodhisattva.}