I do love autumn. I'd love it more if my boss hadn't sent us out on inspections today. What the hell, like any of us want to be out in the field when we could be starting our weekends early. Let's roll on with a couple of books on their penultimate issues.
The issue plays out in reverse, as Philip and yet another agent are sent to capture a former agent of WORLDE who has escaped with certain pieces of equipment, including eyes that can see future events, and some sort of living combat suit. Which Philip shoots with a bullet designed to give the suit, 'Fast-Forward Alzheimers.' Bratukhin illustrates this by having the suit taking on a fleshy tumorous appearance like something out of a Berni Wrightson illustrated horror story, where it was previously like an overly-detailed Iron Man suit.
As it turns out, the former agent had desired to start a family of her own. Surely, Philip, with a secret family of his own, would be sympathetic? Well, if you consider knee-capping her with armor piercing rounds after his partner kills her family, then hooking her up to a machine so the precognitive eyes only show her certain happy moments from her life over and over, sympathetic, then sure. A bundle of compassion this one is.
I don't really know where Camp is going with all this. What am I supposed to feel towards Philip? In terms of the question posed in issue 1, whether he's any better than the other agents because he feels sad about the things he does, my general response is, "no." He still does these things, and then goes home to the happy family he, but none of the others, get to have. Why? Because he's smarter, so he's earned having his family?
But he seems to be irritating his higher-ups with his recent actions, so maybe it's all going to come to a head. WORLDE is a vicious, cruel, dehumanizing organization that feels it has the right to control everything, and Philip is, in that sense, as much a victim of it as the people WORLDE sics him on. But he is still helping line people up against the wall, so I can't muster much sympathy for him.
The Static are quite insistent Wren must confront "Oz" and kill him, it, whatever. Wren tries to convince them to find a way out, but the Static feel they understand this world, and they won't make it out there. And if Wren won't help, they'll kill her. So she's down the rabbit hole, sneaking around the monsters' backs as they watch footage from myriad points in the history of this place. The way the Static describe it, Blink itself is a living place that provides for them, independent of whatever "Oz" is doing. That backstory is outlined in a couple of pages that Sherman draws where the panels are either bordered by of VHS tape, or are drawn as like pieces of skin or hide stretched out with wires.
One has to question, given that, Oz apparently saw the Static and Wren coming, whether it is behind all that as well. Giving the Static enough to keep them going against the Signal, because all this is going towards some goal it wants. Wren takes an endless dumbwaiter ride to a white room with a pyramid of TVs. My immediate thought was whether where in the Matrix, or that one episode of Cowboy Bebop with the weird cult leader guy. Wren smashes open a screen, and crawls through to find herself looking into the barrel of a gun.
The big reveal of the issue is that one of the Static, presumably the one constantly pushing her, is one of her parents. Which Wren only finds out as said parent falls to a likely death. I guess that's a hell of a way to find that out, and not much of a reunion. My guess is the one monster that protected her in an earlier issue was her other parent, captured at some point and changed. That wouldn't explain to me why Wren was seeing him in her sleep before she ever returned, since he hadn't been captured when they got her out. I really hope this is not going to end up as "all a simulation, even the part outside the building." I might throw the comics in the trash on principle if it is.
Wren's constantly doubted whether she can do anything, yet also constantly been able to keep going. Keep moving, keep fighting, even take command and figure out how to get to the dumbwaiter when the Static didn't know what lay ahead. Somehow that feels connected to the way the Static told her they couldn't go back to the basement and try to escape. That there was no going back to the past, Blink wouldn't allow it. That doesn't feel entirely accurate, seeing as returning to this place was Wren returning to her past, but if we're meant to see her life since then as drifting or hiding, maybe she had to go back to move forward. I hope this all makes some sort of sense after next issue, but I don't remember feeling like I understood Test, either, so I'm not confident.
No comments:
Post a Comment