Sunday Splash Page #108

"Best Idea Cave's Had All Day," in Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye #3, by Gerard Way and Jon Rivera (writers), Michael Avon Oeming (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Clem Robins (letterer)

Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye was one of the initial entries in DC's Young Animal line, which may or may not still exist at the time this was posted. I don't know exactly what the goal was behind the line - a new Vertigo, maybe - but it didn't exactly seem to pan out.

At some point, Cave Carson, explorer of the subterranean world, got himself a cybernetic eye. I don't know when, exactly - he had it when he showed up in the first volume of Resurrection Man back in the '90s - and apparently it had never been explained. So Way and Rivera spent a little time on that, while also having Cave reconnect with his daughter Chloe, and having the two of them try to cope with their grief over the death of Cave's wife Mazra, who is actually the princess of an underground kingdom.

The story initially seemed like it was simply a strange cult trying to unleash something held trapped by the people of Muldroog. It seemed likely Cave, Chloe, and Cave's pal Wild Dog (who gets to fulfill the typically fun role of Character Entirely Out of Their Depth) would have to face all sorts of dangers below the Earth's surface. Then the thing that was unleashed started hopping dimensions, they chased after it, they met a living version of one of Cave's old professors, a different universe's version of Cave and Doc Magnus. It does end up giving Cave and Chloe a chance for some closure, but the second half of the book still felt like it went off the rails. A little too big or scattered.

On the other hand, it gave Oeming the chance to draw a lot of bizarre stuff, including monsters, fungus creatures, inter-dimensional travel. Filardi brings out some interesting color patterns as backgrounds for some of those pages, and in general some really vivid colors that make things pop. Things have an otherwordly or almost hallucinatory feel to them.

After this ran for 12 issues, there was a second series, Cave Carson has an Interstellar Eye, where he and Chloe travel into space, which I bought for three issues before dropping it.