"Days I remember all my life..."
The first issue in this 12 issue series really bowled me over. I thought it was really brave in terms of the sheer magnitude of the story it was telling. It was a dirty grimy look at life in 2022 on the basis of the West's current trajectory. Let's see how the story continues in this issue.
After a pretty explosive first issue the story now settles down into a much more detailed and deliberate groove. First thing to mention - we open with a Manic Street Preachers quote. Amen. Second of all, this book again shows how to write with economy without being pretentious. Short crisp dialogue weighted perfectly can be so effective and that is the case here.
The art in this issue was however a lot murkier that the previous issue. The first 5 pages were extremely dark and I find that a little off putting. It is a personal preference, but I was reading on a backlit digital copy. It makes me wonder how that would come across on the hard copy page. One saving grace may be that Image publishes on high quality paper which may ease things slightly. Anyway, I found it a bit dark and dense.
The story here is more of a series of vignettes, again precision weighted to reveal characters more fully, an exchange between two strangers on a plane, a discussion in a hotel room, dialogue between two characters on a park bench. All measured out carefully and precisely.
This wasn't as driven as the jam-packed opening installment but this was a very good issue with a more moderate and stately pacing. The art put me off a little this issue, but I think that was just down to some of Bellaire's opening color choices as opposed to anything that would put me off the book. All in all a solid continuation from the last issue's great start.