Have you ever felt your stomach twist into knots over and over, wondering if the pain will ever subside?
Some of you may ask how one can read a comic filled with such emotional turmoil? The answer is simple, I anticipate the end of heartache for our protagonist.
My gut tells me this is the pain Max must feel through every step of his journey in trying to rescue this one, special child with who it appears he has developed a sort of kinship. I promise no major spoilers in a preview, but it will be tough.
If you have read the first two issues, then you know the relationship between Max and his mechanic buddy Jelly is going south. Those panels are absolutely gut-wrenching. You also know Max is expecting betrayal, but it is as though he has given up and accepts fate. It is as though he questions his own existence and wonders what future is possible if he can’t remember his own past. It is amazing how Darcy van Poelgeest is able to bring such a character to life. An individual so lost, lacking a past and can’t fathom his own existence being real.
This is some Albert Camus $@I% going on here. I love it.
Each page of the third chapter, aptly titled: The Daughter and The Darkness finds the tension building, the quest deepening. The backgrounds appear to twist in emotional response to behaviors from characters. As Max reflects on his own personal struggles, the world around him struggles with its own reality. Humans are modified to contend with its own nature and environment. However, the actions of The Twelve seek to rebuild and remake the world in its entirety, by using this boy as a conduit to accomplish this massive task. Could this one boy be that powerful to enact world-altering events?
I have to talk about the colors and art as an organic world suddenly turns into these blocky structures, people are pulled in, the panel with Jelly as the blocks come to him is beautiful in the most tragic sense. There is a beauty in the chaos which colorfully unfolds. I can’t help but notice a repeating theme of rescues coming from volatile oceanic waters. Bertam and Hollingsworth do some incredible stuff here. Reminds me of the crazy color-twisting animation I grew up with in the eighties. Can’t help but be pulled in.
The latter portion of the story has major implications for the future. The true nature of the child is revealed, as are the intentions of other characters in the story. This chapter felt past-paced and intense at times.
It’s really something, to imagine a world so twisted, at first glance could appear as vile and distorted. Yet, to the inhabitants of this world this is reality. What we might perceive as a hopeless future, in reality is a world without boundaries. There are forces at work to upheave this world and craft it into something else entirely. I imagine the events of the third chapter will have major repercussions in chapter four.
