Written by Chris Roberson
Illustrated by Rich EllisA year ago, Em found herself at a hospital with no memory, her mind a complete blank. After spending a year rebuilding her life, she is thrust into the middle of a supernatural conflict between immortal beings representing fundamental aspects of the universe itself when she is given the key to a magical shop, the kind that appears in an alley one instant and disappears the next. With nothing but a talking cat to guide her, she finds herself targeted by living statues, an evil ventriloquist’s doll, and the mysterious Court of Shadows…
When he reviewed the comic about a month ago, editor-in-chief Matt Meylikhov gave the comic a pretty good amount of praise. I, on the other hand, was less than enthused. Still, I rarely find #1s to be indicative of the series to come, and so I was sure to see if #2 of Chris Roberson and Rich Ellis’s new fantasy comic could change my mind. Follow the cut and see if it succeeded.
Years ago, writers like Chris Claremont would fill their pages with captions. These days, though, captions are primarily reserved for three things: Inner monologue, off-panel dialogue, and setting information. Occasionally, and typically in superhero comics, you get a name tag for a new character. Rarer still is the authorial narrative, which used to be significantly more common but has fallen out of style in most modern fictional comics. It’s not that authorial narrative can’t be used, it’s that it is so easy for the narrative to become redundant. When telling a story with sequential art, we rarely need words to tell us “And then Arthur struck with his mighty blade” or “The spaceship was massive, completely filling the sky,” because we can see what is being described.
This was my big problem with the first issue of this series. Chris Roberson clearly wants his reader to feel like they are being told a story, and authorial narrative is a major part of capturing that. The first issue, however, had far too much. If you had just taken the captions and dialogue and removed all images, you would almost be able to piece together the entire plot, sans a few major actions. This begs the question: Why bother making it a comic at all? If Roberson wants to tell a story in prose, why not just… do it? With this issue, though, his captions are a bit more under control, if you will. They give us information about the characters thoughts and motives, and fill us in on other details that an establishing shot might otherwise be unable to fill us in on.
That’s not to say that there aren’t things to be cut. On page opens, for example, with the caption “And elsewhere, a fortress of grim stone stood atop darkness falls, where the spangled waters of the current sea tumbled endlessly into the sky.” At the same time, the large panel it is attached to clearly depicts a fortress of grim stone atop dark waterfalls which are tumbling endlessly into the sky. Is that caption necessary? I doubt it.
It’s not that Roberson needs to play it safe, in fear of the artist screwing up his grand vision due to their vague line work. Artist Rich Ellis is doing outstanding work on this book, with extremely clean and readable lines, figures, and motions appearing on ever page. There are a few panels during the scene where Em is on the beach where the background is a bit dull – probably in an effort to portray the typical clear blue sky one would expect in such a setting – but for the most part his backgrounds and “stages,” so to speak, are outstanding. This is what makes the previous fortress panel so redundant; Ellis already does such an expert job at showing us the castle and its exotic location that there’s no need to tell anything.
Story-wise, things get a bit more interesting with this issue. With this issue, there’s so much more present to make the reader care about what’s going on. The idea of Maybe, Moment, and Memory as separate, semi-procedural planes of existence is unique in and of itself. Making one of them “greedy” and wanting to everything to exist in the future/at the moment/in the past is on a whole different level. The dialogue is fresh, in contrast to the slightly forced conversation of the first issue, and the characters three-dimensional. That doesn’t necessarily mean I like them, though; that damn smug cat is more annoying than endearing, if you ask me. Still, that’s a matter of personal preference (just ask Matt how he feels about talking cats), rather than technical ability. All I can truly fault this comic for are the previously mentioned captions, and maybe for the cliche of an amnesiac main character.
I suppose I’ve harped on the first issue just as much as this one at this point, but I merely want to draw attention to what I’ve long considered a flaw of the standard serialized comic format. The first issue usually isn’t a good indication of the quality of the work as a whole. I’ve read many a series – or, at least, a handful of issues from a series – where the first issue is excellent, but everything goes downhill quickly. On the other hand, a few of my favorite series start off with a bit of a whimper, and soon build up to true excellence. At the end of the day, I’m going to be much more interested in checking out the third issue of a series that started off weakly and then took a major step up to “pretty good” by the second issue than I would be with a series that started off quite nicely and stayed that way between issues. It’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, yes, but Memorial definitely falls into the former category, and I can guarantee you that I won’t be missing its third issue.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – It’s getting there.
