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Pick of the Week: “Barrier” #1

By | May 10th, 2018
Posted in Pick of the Week, Reviews | % Comments

Available for the first time in physical form, “Barrier” #1 kicks off a timely and topical tale of the things that keep us divided. (Warning: minor spoilers ahead.)

Cover by Marcos Martin
and Munsta Vicente
Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrated Marcos Martin
Colored by Muntsa Vicente

From the Eisner Award-winning team behind THE PRIVATE EYE, BARRIER is an unconventional drama about violence, language, and illegal immigration…with a shocking sci-fi twist. After debuting on PanelSyndicate.com, this critically acclaimed five-part miniseries finally comes to print, exclusively from Image Comics. After making the massive, 50-plus-page first issue available to mature readers for FREE on Free Comic Day, this special collector’s edition of the first issue is being released in a larger size to match the next four issues being released WEEKLY throughout the rest of May! Printed in its original “landscape” format (side-stapled for convenient shelving!) and graced with gorgeous cardstock covers, each comic is meant to be a durable work of art, and there are no plans for these print issues to ever be collected, so the only way to own your own copies of this groundbreaking story is by supporting your friendly neighborhood comic shop!

As the solicit text above suggests, “Barrier” began as a digital, pay-what-you-want web comic. So, who is this version for? Well, with a cardstock cover and limited edition print run, Image Comics clearly hopes to attract collectors, as well as the most passionate Brian K. Vaughan fans. But even if you don’t fall into either of those categories, there are still some solid reasons to plunk down your hard earned cash and buy a comic that you could have paid pennies for back when it first came out.

The first thing that jumps out, of course, is the horizontal aspect ratio. Unlike the overwhelming majority of floppies, trade paperbacks, and OGNs — not to mention our monthly bills and ubiquitous Word documents — this book is printed in landscape format. It’s a decidedly atypical choice but one that’s uniquely aligned with the book’s subject matter, setting, and themes. In fact, much like the CinemaScope movie format, the book’s “widescreen” page layouts are perfectly suited to big skies, wide open spaces, and seemingly endless fence lines. At its heart, this book is a Western, the one subject custom made for ultra-wide framing and vast, expansive shots of nearly empty terrain dotted by occasional horses, mesas, and trains. Flipping through these pages, you can feel the wind on your face and the dust in your teeth and hear the distant sound of truck tires crunching on gravel.

Not every page layout works but, for the most part, artists Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente fully exploit the freedom they’re given. Things work very well in exactly the kinds of scenes you’d expect, such as when lone rider, Liddy, one of our two key protagonists, approaches on her horse from afar with nothing but the pink-magenta twilit landscape behind her. The wide format works even better in scenes that are filled to the brim with subjects and motion. The five page train scene near the end, a great deal of which is entirely wordless, is some of the best cartooning you’re going to see anywhere. Here, the paneling and compositions are nearly flawless. The action is filled with tension, yet unfolds organically with an intuitive, seamless flow. Each beat in itself is well constructed and builds on the others around it, and with so much room to breathe, nothing feels overcrowded or unnecessarily cramped.

Granted, there are at least a couple of moments where the paneling seems to stumble and the flow is interrupted. Thankfully, these moments are few and things immediately correct themselves and get back on track. There’s also a multi-page sequence that intentionally uses negative space to create an all-too-obvious visual metaphor but somehow it comes off as simultaneously brilliant and a shameless, gimmicky trick; a natural outcome, I think, when creators push themselves to think outside the box. In fact, this sequence also includes what is perhaps the book’s most interesting moment. In two exceptionally well crafted three-panel pages, we see the heartbreakingly lonely Liddy juxtaposed against Oscar, the other protagonist, who’s silently making his way from Honduras to the U.S. border without any companions or assistance. Clearly, these two are destined to encounter each other and the build-up feels as intense as it does inevitable.

Continued below

The other major creative decision, of course, is the use of dialogue that feels more or less equally weighted between English and Spanish. Needless to say, this is the book’s central theme: the literal and metaphorical things that keep us divided and their physical or cultural manifestations. Clearly, there are few things that keep us more separate than the languages we speak.

Assuming you don’t read English and Spanish with equal ease, Vaughn suggests in the endmatter that it’s not entirely necessary to “run to Google translate” to fully understand every word and phrase that the characters speak. I’m not convinced this is true. For me, the illustrations carry the load and I basically get it, but my middle school Spanish leaves significant gaps that I can’t fill in on my own. There are others, I imagine, for whom the opposite is true. In either case, a more complete understanding of the dialogue will definitely add nuance and layers of meaning.

In that way, Vaughn, Martin, and Vincente have thrown down a challenge, putting us in the shoes of two characters from very different worlds forced into a situation where they must work to understand each other or suffer the consequences. For our part, we can ignore that challenge and choose not do the work, but the characters can’t do that. Ultimately, the synergy between the book’s subject matter and its story structure make for an intriguing combination that begs for deeper engagement.

Final Verdict: 7.9 – “Barriers” #1 is an immersive comic book experience with lush illustrations and authentic dialogue that will force you to dig deeper to better understand the story.


//TAGS | Pick of the Week

John Schaidler

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