After the Facts is a two-issue miniseries, each issue containing two stories.  The connecting theme is apparently that all the stories take place after a life-changing event, although that's a fairly loose theme on the strength of this issue.

The lead story, "System Failures", is written Randy Lander with art by David Farabee.  Of course, Randy's best known as a comics reviewer, and it's always risky for anyone who goes around spouting opinions on other people's work to have a go themselves - as Bill Jemas discovered last issue.  The issue carries an endorsement from Gail Simone, who was also prominent as an internet commentator before her writing career took off.  (Well, I assume "Randy can write comics every bit as well as he writes reviews" is an endorsement, at least...)

It's a sci-fi story, modestly described in the press release as a potboiler.  That's a fairly accurate description of what you're getting here - it's a spaceship on the borders of enemy territory, coming under attack, and two characters stuck in the aftermath.  The design and setting have definite Star Trek qualities to them, and it's a firmly traditional sci-fi short story in that sort of vein.  It's not desperately ambitious, it's simply an attempt to entertain.

And yes, taken on those terms, it's pretty good.  Randy constructs his story well, and sets up the finish effectively without being too blatant about it.  The story is really about the interaction between the two characters, and while the dialogue verges on the melodramatic, it works within the genre.  David Farabee's art is rough around the edges, and at time the movement of the characters is a little awkward, but he tells the story well, and the layouts are solid.  It's much better than you would expect from a completely neophyte creative team.

The other half of the book (as the back cover admits) is the sort of confessional/angst story that used to be very popular in the alternative comics genre but seems to have dropped off considerably in the last year.  This one's about a man refusing to get over being dumped.

M Robert Turnage is responsible for an online comic called Stickley & Jones, which is done with (fairly rudimentary) computer graphics.  This is conventionally drawn, but the art style is still fairly rudimentary.  But that can work for this sort of story, and although Turnage's art is at the amateur end of the scale even by the standards of this genre, it does more or less work.

It's basically a set of vignettes on the character's inability to get over his previous relationships, with some of the standard elements (the platonic female friend telling him where he's going wrong, and so forth).  It does all this quite well, but it's not desperately new material, and this is a well-worn theme.  There's also not a great deal of plot progression - Davis is every bit as ineffectively smitten at the end as he was in the beginning.

As self-published anthologies go, this isn't bad.  I'm not quite sure who the audience is for an anthology of slightly retro sci-fi and angst confessional, mind you.  The main downside is that it's sticking to very well-trodden territory.  But it does do it fairly well. 

Rating: B

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