Change is scary. Change is polarizing. Change is certainly confusing. It makes sense that a comic named “Change” would be all these things as well. But it’s certainly been showing us a hell of a messy, postmodern, Lovecraftian time, and here, in its second-last issue, it’s all starting to make a skewed kind of sense.
Written by Ales Kot
Illustrated by Morgan JeskeDid you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind?
The astronaut is falling. Someone is dead. Someone is dying. Someone needs saving. NOW.
Poetic, fractured, elliptical and strange, the first two issues of “Change” were both fun and challenging, weaving together a scenario that somehow deeply connected a Hollywood screenwriter, a rapper, a man in mourning and an astronaut – while somewhere deep below Los Angeles, some Lovecraftian menace began to make itself felt. It was all much more writerly than readerly, taking as granted that the audience was not going to be let in on everything, and it gave the impression that Kot and Jeske were out to keep the reader disoriented – if not a bit frustrated and annoyed, too. Part of the fun and the difficulty was the way the captions belonging to different storylines and the panels illustrating them were kept at a near-constant mismatch, necessitating some mental gymnastics in order to keep a grasp on the story.
That’s not quite the case in this issue, which embodies a more relaxed and straightforward approach in detailing the sticky situation in which rapper Wallace and his screenwriter Sonia find themselves. Now face-to-face with some rather bewildering horrors, we get access to their plight by means of comparatively simple storytelling, and it feels like just about the right moment for the shift. The same shift in tactics is making itself felt as the plot coalesces: even the most poetically-minded reader was probably expecting the wild threads of the first two issues to be tied up somehow, even if it’s in a metaphorical way, and it makes sense that in this penultimate issue we’re already getting some hints in that direction. As the ostensible villains make something of their intentions clear, the nature of the four characters’ mysterious connection to one another is beginning to emerge, and while obviously it’s not spelled out for us yet, this glimmer of a resolution and sense of accumulating momentum adds another layer of suspense to the tale.
Kot also shakes things up with a couple tongue-in-cheek asides during the first few pages, which are a neat change of pace as well as informative (did you know that Basil-Lime elixir “tastes like morning sex”?). Meanwhile, Kot manages to keep a certain amount of emotion bubbling on the surface, which is quite a feat when there’s so much story to manage. And though a certain pervading shallowness – a tendency toward privileging cloudy metaphor over the meaningful doings of the characters – does still make itself felt, Kot’s showing a good feel for pacing as he smooths and slows this story down.
Regardless of how you feel about Kot’s writing, though – which is still divisive in this streamlined form – the Morgan Jeske’s art is a pleasure in itself, as well as a perfect match to the chaotic story. Loose but disciplined, made up lines that alternate between hair-like and staccato, and often suggesting enough energy to feel like it’s coming apart at the seams, it keeps this issue flowing, breaking up some moments that could qualify as exposition, and pushing the envolope in terms of mind-bending cray when the situation demands it. And while the layouts are more straightforward here than they have been, they inject a little bit of the weird into even the ostensibly quiet pages. All the while, Sloane Leong’s fever-dream colours give it all an extra dose of the surreal, never quite settling into a scheme, and surprising you at every turn.
At heart, “Change” is as alienating a story as ever, and that’s kind of the point. This is a metaphorical mash that probably won’t quite make sense until the climax, when Kot and Jeske nudge all the pieces into place, and part of the suspense is the waiting for that moment. The trick is reconciling yourself to the waiting, and between the engaging writing and the off-kilter art, there’s plenty to enjoy when you do so.
Final Verdict: 7.9 – People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
