Whiteout: Melt - Review

Whiteout: Melt is the follow up to Greg Rucka's and Steve Lieber's original Whiteout series. Both books are action/thrillers starring Carrie Stetko, a U.S. Marshal stationed in Antarctica. Both books are also great reads. As any regular reader of this blog should know, I think Greg Rucka is an excellent writer - especially when he's writing action/suspense stuff, and especially when he's got a strong female lead. Whiteout: Melt is no exception. Carrie is an engaging, entertaining character that you root for immediately and the story is tightly and perfectly plotted. Steve Lieber is masterful in his art chores. He vividly conveys the coldness, bareness, and dirtiness of Antarctica. These two creators were the perfect match for this series of books.

Sounds like I loved everything about the book, doesn't it? Well, I didn't. Whiteout: Melt was way too short. Things are so tightly plotted - the action moves so fast - that the story is over just as you're getting comfortable with it. I WANT MORE CARRIE STETKO! I like reading about her. She's a fun character. I wanted this book to go on and on. Tell me what Carrie does next, and then what she does after that, and where does she goes, and . . .

Sign of a good writer: creates a character that you want to learn more and more about.

Of course that really isn't a complaint about the art, just a wish that there was more Whiteout to read. Rucka and Lieber had told the story they wanted to tell and they were done. There wasn't a need for anything more and they didn't pack anything un-necessary to the story into the comic. It's a book boiled down to the essentials. A lean and mean entertainment machine.

Whiteout: Melt, like its predecessor Whiteout, is an excellent comic. Like comic writer Brian Bendis says in his forward, "I always find myself wishing that (Whiteout) was the standard of comics, not the exception. Not the needle in the haystack. Wouldn't that be a wonderful state of affairs?"

Yes, it would.