I was thinking about going to a comic convention tomorrow, but I don't really want to drive 3 hours. Plus, I'd probably pick up a bug while I was there and I've got an elderly relative's birthday to attend next weekend, so maybe next year. In the meantime, here's two second issues.
Our protagonist teams up with another old acquaintance, Ares Hill. He gets along better with Ares than Kilgore last issue, as they spend part of the story reminiscing and catching up while retrieving the MacGuffin. This action is interspersed with scenes from Phil's quiet home life watching movies with his daughter and talking her through nightmares.
At the end of the issue, Ares intends to use the MacGuffin to make things how he wants. He'd been undercover, with an entire implanted psyche and a family. A family he killed when the mission was over, per his orders. He wants that back. Phil kills him and tells him he ought to have grown up, or come to Phil for help. Before he dies, Ares asks if Phil would have done the same if their situation was reversed? Judging by Phil's expression, I'm guessing the answer is no.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of Phil. He claims he sees everything a person can be, which Bratukhin shows with all the tiny little sepia or greyed-out panels that surround the main action as Phil walks through a mess of enemies, killing a bunch of them. And he seems sad about this, but, as Kilgore noted in issue 1, that doesn't stop Phil from doing it. So what's the difference? Those people are dead whether Phil feels bad about it afterwards while he tucks in his daughter (that he hasn't had to kill).
Camp seems to position Ares a bit like the old friend from college that never grew up or beyond what they were then, while Phil has matured in worldview with his additional responsibilities. Camp's good at writing them as old friends who had a lot of good times once. But Phil's worldview seems to be to kill whoever WORLDE tells him to, then go home to his family. They were arguing earlier in the issue about movies and how Ares can't enjoy the special effects spectacle because he knows it's fake, while Phil says he can see the wires, but enjoys it anyway. Which seems to suggest he knows he's in a crappy world, and helping make it crappier, but he doesn't really care. "Fuck everyone, I got mine," ain't a particularly mature worldview either.
Wren and Joel run from the creatures, but their way out is sealed, and they can't find another. Not that Wren is willing to go. She wants answers, even if it kills her. I don't know if I can follow that thinking, that the life she built was 'hollow' as she puts it, because she doesn't have these answers. But my situation is not her situation. I know where I came from, at least enough to satisfy me.
Wren doesn't know anything, and the next set of security monitors don't tell much. People agreed to stay in this place for six months back during the Y2K freakout. But whoever set it up changed their minds and wouldn't let anyone out at the end. The creatures find them again, Wren and Joel run, Joel gets a knife through the skull. Bye Joel.
Wren finds her way to a hall full with photographs, then some immense cathedral. Where she's captured by a creepy whispering guy in a hood. Good luck with those answers.
All the panels are set against a backdrop of TV snow or static, streaks of pixels. Some of the panels themselves have those blurring effects, like we're watching this through those same broken-down monitors Wren and Joel found. Sherman uses a lot of panels that are focused tightly on Wren. He might pull back for an establishing shot, to give us a sense of what she's found. Then he draws in close immediately afterward to make her feel trapped. Some pages, the panels fit around each other like puzzle pieces, in others, they're arranged as a giant arrow when Wren gets dragged down. He plays with the sense of space, in that you can't tell if Wren's pushed up against a wall, or flat on the floor. The panels may point down, but which direction is that at this point?
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