Elsewhere 3 Reviews 

“Elsewhere” #3

By | October 5th, 2017
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

On planet Earth hundreds of people go missing every year, never to be found again. Meanwhile, elsewhere  some of these missing people find themselves in an unlikely situation surrounded by imaginative beasts and fantastical landscapes. Take a journey into these otherworldly surroundings with Jay Faerber, Sumeyye Kesgin, and company, and check our opinion on it too. (There are spoilers!)

Cover by Sumeyye Kesgin
Written by Jay Faerber
Illustrated by Sumeyye Kesgin
Coloured by Ron Riley
Lettered by Thomas Mauer

Amelia Earhart and her new friends seek shelter from the invading Vanthi—and find it in the most unexpected place!

This issue is much slower with the action than the previous ones. The first issue jumped straight into the adventure and the second one had exciting turns too, plus a little backstory, but now it’s time for more conversations and planning. That doesn’t mean that the issue is a drag, though, as Amelia and the others have to escape from a huge swarm of flesh-eating insect-like flying creatures and the threat of Kragen constantly looms over them. They get a new goal too, which is to break in to Lord Kragen’s prison to free his new captives. It’s just that escaping from the prison has been painted as this big and extremely dangerous feat, but it has already been managed twice during the series, and keep in mind there have only been two issues before this, so it eats away some of Kragen’s threateningness.

Turkish artist Sumeyye Kesgin proves again to be a fantastic illustrator choice for this series.  Amelia looks like a real person instead one of those doll-like female characters who are meant to look as beautiful as possible. Kesgin uses body language expertly. Amelia looks brave and ready for action even in an unfamiliar situtation, while aircraft hijacker DB Cooper stands around looking more impassive, carrying his jacket over his shoulder and not interested in getting into a fight. The Korvathian characters look sympathetic even if they are a bit hard to differentiate from each other. The scenery isn’t as breath-taking as in the first two issues since this issue takes place entirely on ground with no flying scenes, but still looks good. The layouts don’t get too busy and there are a lot of big panels used. Ron Riley’s colouring is mostly blue and green, and while it does create that mysterious and otherworldly tone, some variation would be nice.

The pacing works well: writer Jay Faerber knows when to bring the story forward fast and when to slow it down. What doesn’t work just as fine is his dialogue, as it’s a bit clunky at some points and there was one line I couldn’t even figure out the meaning of, but that’s a minor complaint. In a comic starring real life people there naturally has to be a lot of thought put into the characters, how they work and how strictly do we keep to historical facts. Faerber’s work with the characters is just as good as Kesgin’s. Amelia and DB’s relationship is an interesting one, because DB knows who Amelia is (of course since she became famous for her disappearance long before his time) but Amelia has no idea who DB is. If the pilot eventually finds out that she is allied with a plane hijacker it will sure create distrust between them. Even a notorious criminal like Cooper can be expected to stay loyal to the only other human around in the face of otherworldly dictators and flesh-hungry creatures, but that doesn’t mean that he’s being honest with her.

We learn that there are more Earth people in this world besides Amelia and DB, confirmed by the resistance group’s leader and the Nazi U-boat they find, but no answers are given yet. This is a good choice since the book’s idea behind missing people ending up in another world is a very exciting one and more unique than, say, a world where people go after their death. How time and language work in this world are also still questions. Disappeared submarines and other marine vehicles have their own brand of conspiracy theories, so bringing one in to the story is an obvious choice. It will be exciting to see if the creative team brings in more real life missing people, but not so many that it would just be a gimmick. With what they have shown of their talent and imagination working with this series, they seem more than likely to know how to keep the balance and keep readers interested. With just a little bit of fine tuning (mainly with the dialogue and the unvaried colour palette) “Elsewhere” could rise to be even better than it is now, and it already is pretty great.

Final verdict: 7.0 – An adventure worth following for anyone who likes to wonder about the unsolved mysteries of history.


Frida Keränen

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