“The Six Fingers” #1

This is a book about a guy who has dreams of a career in academia, but until then is working a low level blue collar job to make ends meet. He has all these big ideas and is struggling to make others see how important and valuable they can be, but he actually enjoys his life at this moment because his current job lets him think and run on autopilot. Also, he’s deeply introspective but not very good at interacting with people.

I bring this up because this is EXTREMELY relatable and I feel VERY called out… but in a good way.

Let’s see if today’s book “The Six Fingers” #1 has anything else to say.

Cover by: Sumit Kumar,
Lee Loughride,
and Tom Muller

Written by Dan Watters
Illustrated by Sumit Kumar
Colored by Lee Loughridge
Lettered by Aditya Bidikar

Mini-Series Premiere. Neo Novena archaeology student Johannes Vale has always been so very in control of his life. But when he commits a brutal murder using the M.O. of a historic and notorious serial killer, everything begins to spiral out of control… primarily as Johannes doesn’t remember doing it. What follows is a deadly cat-and-mouse game as Johannes seeks refuge in the rain-soaked streets of Neo Novena. He will stop at nothing to unravel the secrets and ciphers of what he did and why he did it; but each revelation only leads further into the dark heart of his future-metropolis and Johannes’ own heartbroken soul. Grippingly written by writer Dan Watter with hauntingly atmospheric art and covers by Sumit Kumar and Lee Loughridge, The Six Fingers is a miniseries that will keep you on the edge until the very end.

Johannes is a young man with ambitions to work as an archaeologist. He’s obsessed with exploring how cultures develop and why humans behave the way we do. All this culminates with him trying to get money for an archeological expedition to a distant mine from where his father sent him an arrowhead made up of a strange metal.

Things don’t go very well with the proposal and Johannes spends the rest of the issue dealing with his job (which is soul crushing and menial, but he actually likes), his love life (his girlfriend doesn’t see a future in their relationship), and a strange bout of what what looks like dissociative personality disorder (no further details will be given here for spoilers).

There’s also something about a small, yet strange mutation and the book seems to be setting up a larger world for different stories.

“The Six Fingers” #1 is written by Dan Watters, who does a very good job of creating the character of Johannes and making him extremely relatable. Watters writes the main character as a young man with dreams and ideas that feel like they’re too big for his current lot in life, and it’s something he finds frustrating. Still, Johannes does manage to find a certain level of joy and contentment in his current situation, especially in the job that lets him pay the bills because it “allows him to run on autopilot and think”. Also, he’s capable of quite a bit of self introspection that allows him to be sociable, but makes interacting with other people difficult. It feels like a lot of thought and effort went into the creation of Johannes and that the author may have drawn on more than a few personal experiences when creating this book. That’s not to say it’s the truth, but either way it’s a testament to Watters’ ability as a writer that this comic has such a relatable and well written character.

While “The Six Fingers” #1 is brilliant in the character department, it does suffer from some big picture problems and pacing issues. The beginning of the comic introduces all these big and weighty themes and sets up a pretty intriguing mystery with lots of blood and violence, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s brought back up near the end of the first issue, but by then the story has devoted so much time to the mundane aspects of Johannes’ life that it feels jarring and out of place. Also, the book alludes to a wider story that takes place in a separate book and much more expansive world building, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere or do anything. On top of that, the world that this comic creates doesn’t feel particularly fleshed out. There are some interesting elements of high technology, social and societal decay, quite a bit of violence and gore, and robots, but there isn’t too much in this comic that gives it a sense of the time and place of the story. It feels like a story that wants to say something more, but gets lost in the tiny little details of character and plot.

Since the writing of “The Six Fingers” #1 doesn’t do the world building of the comic any favors, it’s up to the artwork to pick up the slack, and for the most part it succeeds. The art is provided by Sumit Kumar, who does a great job of crafting a dirty, grimy, industrial world where beauty and nature are in short supply. This is a world that feels depressed and at the end of something as evidenced by the brutalist architecture, the lack of bright colors, and a strange fetishization of human body parts and blood. This feeling is enhanced with the harsh beauty of Lee Loughridge’s colors, which make the whole book feel dark, washed out, and bleak. As for the small stuff, Kumar does a great job with the characters and creates a book that is interesting to look at, but not hyper fixated on detail. The characters have a minimalist look that allows them to be incredibly clear with their expressions and allow the reader to see what they are feeling.

“The Six Fingers” #1 is a comic with amazing character work, a weird world with hints of something bigger happening beyond the understanding of the protagonist, and the idea of a world that could be interesting in future issues. However, it seems that the creative team is too focused on the fine details of storytelling without giving the reader a clearer idea of the larger mystery at play, and sadly the book does suffer because of it.

Final Verdict: 6.8- While the creative team has created a book with an interesting aesthetic and has some of the best character work I’ve seen in 2024, there are some pretty substantial issues with the big picture and themes of the story.