Cancertown #1
AAM Markosia
Dethan and Downey
When I saw the cover of this comic I was intrigued. I mean how often do you see a comic cover with a giant floating eyeball, a bald neurotic looking guy with an x on his head (in blood perhaps?), and what looks to be a bad ass detective? And although the description sounded a bit horrific–the main character has a brain tumor the size of a fist–it still sounded like it would be an interesting and wild adventure. But….for me the story failed to live up to expectations and the artwork on the inside isn’t quite as dynamic as the cover.
Our story begins with our main character being grabbed by his tie, beaten and shoved out a second story window. He bounces off of a brick wall, but manages to land on the ground mostly unhurt (a bit bruised, but no broken bones.) Oh…and he can’t remember what just happened. He finds a tooth in his pocket, not one of his own, and heads back up to his flat to find out how he ended up falling out of the window….and is attacked by some mysterious flying ball of white goo! After successfully getting it out of his apartment (and back to wherever it came from), he heads downtown to talk to The Blister Girl when the white goo monster returns and causes a homeless person laying nearby to vanish piece by piece. Our hero, Vince, allows himself to be taken to head into the world that the monster came from. And he’s prepared to do battle.
Here’s my biggest problem with the comic, there isn’t enough of it to figure out what’s going on in the story. I mean it feels like we’re just tossed into the middle of a city, not given a map, and told “see ya!” as a speeding car pulls away. We don’t even find out the main characters name until ⅔ of the way through the comic. And the description? We’re told that the main character, Vince, has a tumor and straddles this other world…but we never actually get told this in the comic. I mean it would explain so much about the mysterious white goo creature. And the ending where the strange goo monster eats/vanishes the homeless guy we’re not even given an explanation as to whether the creature is eating him or sending him to an alternate universe. How are we supposed to know what’s going on? Overall, it’s an interesting concept based upon the description given, but it’s a weak introduction to the series. Perhaps they give us some of these details in other issues, but I think we just need more out of this first issue.
The artwork isn’t bad, but it isn’t in the best in the world either. Unlike the art style on the cover, the interior artist seems to be more enthralled with trying to show the gritty heart of whatever city we’re in, instead of making the characters seem real. The human figures often lack detail to their faces and the expressions just seem lacking vitality. The colors in the issue are ok, but sometimes they bleed together and make things look blurry. It looks like it was done with a combination of markers, watercolor, and sometimes pen & ink just to get he details in…and that to me is one of the bigger issues is that the artist gets a bit heavy handed with the black line in some places instead of creating the detail through the colors. Overall I’m just not impressed with artwork.
I’d be willing to give a second issue a try, but I really hope that the writing is better and they give us a clue as to what the heck is going on in this series. Also, no offense to the interior artist, but why can’t the cover art style match the interior art? As for recommending this series…I can only do that if they start answering some of the questions in the next issue.
