Writer’s Note: While there are text stories in the back of the issue, this review will singularly focus on the content of the comic proper.
When depressed, we do awful things. We’ve parroted false philosophies, desperate to find comfort in anything. We’ve hurt and insulted loved ones with casual cruelties they didn’t deserve. We’ve self-harmed without any recognition. Self-hate hangs you slowly, suffocating until all you can do is swallow your pride and whatever is nearby.
Written by Tom PeyerCover by Alan Robinson
Illustrated by Alan Robinson
Colored by Lee Loughridge
Lettered by Rob Steen
Penultiman seeks a way out of his emotional spiral by reading a self-help book about positivity, then starts acting like a jerk in public. His android understudy, Antepenultiman, ruins Penultiman’s secret identity. Plus the usual AHOY extra prose stories and illustrations!
“Penultiman #3” continues its discussion of this kind of sorrow with heap after heap of indignities. Here our hero is trying their best to stay positive. He has fallen into the trap we have fallen all into when we’re this deep – magical thinking mistaken for gospel. He wants value and to be loved but instead has transformed himself into a prophet for victim-blaming. Be positive and only positive things happen to you.
Tom Peyer knows the truth though. His script captures the ugliness of unfocused, desperate self-improvement. Our Superman-esque protagonist’s naval-gazing functions perfectly as near pitch-black comedy and as well written characterization. His flaws and failures feel true to every one of us that has had a copy of “The Four Agreements” desperately shoved into our hands.
Greatly appreciated is the willingness to let Penultiman be awful. So much of personal evolution is discomfort, a willingness to face your worst elements. And Tom Peyer never flinches, no matter how hot the fire is or how many people are transforming into dinosaurs.
None of this suffering would be survivable for the audience without the work of Alan Robinson and Lee Loughridge. The art has improved in each issue building so much humanity and color into a world that could’ve in less confident hands fallen into the dull greys that so often define depression. While depression and self-hate can often manifest as a dulling of the world, we know it can go a different way, a warping of the world where colors aren’t less bright but less friendly, where the comforting visual signifiers only portend doom.
Robinson and Loughridge understand this giving us a slightly scuzzier superhero universe. It isn’t melancholic in each second but in each choice. Blues are one shade different – enough to imply a world a difference while still leaving it so close. Lines are heavier in places they would be light and lighter in places they would be heavy. Characters’ bodies turn and twist, cartooning for the futurist cutters.
This is especially apparent in the fight scenes where Penultiman carries with him a silent weight. There is no joy in any of his poses, no excitement. It’s flat and heavy. He is desperate to be better but so caught up in that desperation he can consider nothing else. Bursting through walls and saving the day is drab. Primary colors are everywhere but the only feeling they can summon is sincere lacking. It’s tragically comic in its warmth like a dog curling up next to its owner to die while wearing a birthday hat.
Special notice, in particular, should be given to the pained smile Robinson is able to summon onto Penultiman’s face. We, who have sat through anything awful with the only thing pushing us through being the knowledge of our own upcoming suicide, will recognize immediately. It’s haunting in its silly accuracy. It’s the face of someone desperate to feel happy. Therapists will constantly remind us to “fake it till you make it.” This is what that so often looks like – clear lies that make everyone uncomfortable.
Rob Steen’s letters capture a wild range of communication. He leans heavily into the flatness of the world. He is able to provide a vivid life to the speech bubbles of the robot while emptying Penultiman of all that soul. He goes so far as to provide more urgency depending on what method we are seeing a moment through. It provides extra context, stressing a moment from another perspective. We never get to forget Penultiman is a god among men, even if he struggles to remember it.
Continued belowIt’s a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy, whichever phrasing you prefer. It doesn’t really matter. Nothing much matters. We are all depressed in the right moment. We are all thinking about killing ourselves. We all sleep with the knowledge we aren’t good enough. And through the character of Penultiman, this team has found a vessel to express that in the language of superheroes. It’s a large scale adventure focused on small scale consequences.
This is the moment we can choose to get better. But first we have to admit we do awful things. Otherwise, we’ll always be second best.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – “Penultiman #3” is tragically comic in its warmth like a dog curling up next to its owner to die while wearing a birthday hat.
