The Nightwatchman Moonlights

The first big Comic-Con announcement, on preview night, was that Dark Horse Comics was planning to publish Orchid, a comic written by Tom Morello, the lead guitarist for Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine, which led most if us there at the time to take in a sharp breath and remark: “I hung around the Dark Horse booth for an hour to hear an announcement that didn’t include the words ‘Buffy’, ‘Sin’ or ‘City’?”

Dial ahead two months and Dark Horse has released a six-page preview of the first issue of a book they’re hyping as “the tale of a teenage prostitute who learns that she is more than the role society has imposed upon her.” Oh, Dark Horse… you had me at “teenage prostitute.” And so did the Internet. Be right back…

THAT’S better. Okay: looking at the preview I’m not holding out a ton of hope for this book. Dark Horse has already tipped that a full quarter of the first issue is tell-don’t-show exposition, which isn’t totally unexpected for a non-comics writer’s first book, but disappointing. The biggest things Dark Horse seem to be hyping around the book are that Morello will be writing a song for each issue – because the problem with most of my comics is that they aren’t noisy enough – and that they’ll be releasing a variant cover by Shepard Fairey, the guy who grabbed a photo of President Obama, slapped the word “HOPE” on the bottom and made a mint for it.

Thank God I, too, have no shame.

Orchid #1 drops October 12th (via Comic Book Resources)