It was nice to have a few days where I could sleep with the window open. But that's over for probably another month. Oh well, it hasn't been an awful summer here, outside of a few three-day stretches. And that one week in June when it rained like crazy.
Yuko and Sebastian took off on their own to confront the Anti-Everything. If they can find him. It takes some work, and the assistance of Drake Limbo, Weird Detective, but they get on the right track. Of course, by the time they get there, Sage has his merry band there already, and the Anti-Everything has done something to a bunch of people to make them into. . . zombies maybe? Their teeth appear rather pointy, and their eyes are white pinholes, but the faces are otherwise muddled.
That's basically it. All the different sides making final preparations and getting their pieces in place for the big fight. The plus side is, Sage said he lost his power of meta-narration, so no more of his annoying caption boxes. Unless Sage was lying. I don't have any real sense of how this might go. Which could be a good sign, that the book doesn't feel predictable.
It feels more like I just don't get what Connelly's driving at. The story seems to drift from setting to setting, with the notion of an apocalypse hanging over everything allegedly driving the action, but it doesn't feel like it. Maybe because Sage is so sure of his plan, but there's no sense of urgency to his actions. Sebastian is supposedly important, and presumably Yuko's close ties with him mean she is as well, but nobody acts much like it. The Anti-Everything isn't making a concerted effort to find them.
I don't know, next issue is the conclusion of the first arc at least. Maybe it'll come together then. Plus, I'll see how Connelly gets around his apparent indifference to drawing action scenes if there's going to be a big fight.
After a massive explosion at their mine, Silas' father is killed and skinned by someone. The sheriff is no help, so Silas hires a lady gunfighter named Humphrey to hunt the killer down. Despite being on foot, the culprit stays ahead of them for days. When they finally get to where they can lie in wait, they get more than they - or at least Humphrey - bargained for. Silas is left alone again, with another skinned body to bury.
Hermes' art, besides making Silas look like a young Man in the Big Yellow Hat, tries evoke the style of the old EC horror comics. The deep shadows around the eyes and the exaggerated expressions. The panel backgrounds that are usually just a solid color, lacking in any details. Unless he's trying to create a sense of setting, in which case it's still sparse, but that's due to the landscape they're traveling in. The lettering on the sound effects is typically big block letters that also seem out of a much older comic.
It certainly creates a kind of mood. People alone, fighting something they don't understand and are ill-equipped to deal with. And it lends weight to the question of why Silas is so hellbent on pursuing this if he's so frightened. Humphrey points out that his family mine will be taken by greedy interests in town since there's no one there to run them off, and Silas basically ignores her. What's so terrifying about that to make him decide chasing a demon is a better alternative? Hermes draws Silas at a distance from other people. Even when they're in the same panel as him, there's a gap. He's in the background or they are. Nobody's looking the same direction as him. His gaze is always on its own thing.
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