The Clock #2 Featured Reviews 

“The Clock” #2

By | February 13th, 2020
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

“The Clock” #2 gives us more insight into the mysterious viral cancer that’s poised to eliminate a chunk of the world’s population. Warning: spoilers ahead.

Cover by Colleen Doran
Written by Matt Hawkins
Illustrated by Colleen Doran
Colored by Bryan Valenza
Lettered by Troy Peteri
When aggressive cancer begins spreading through humanity like a virus, one scientist will sacrifice anything for answers. Is it a global eugenics conspiracy? The beginning of World War III? And can he get to the bottom of it before it takes what’s left of his family?

“The Clock” #2 is a hard sci-fi look at an epidemic, a conspiracy and a relationship between a father and daughter. Hawkins sets out to balance the clinical and the emotional and does a fair job in these first two issues, but the book is overladen with dialogue and often doesn’t let Doran’s expressive art breathe. The best moment in “The Clock” #2 is one that Hawkins refers to in the back matter: the scene featuring Jack on his bed, wracked with grief and surrounded by photos of his wife and family.

Hawkins mentions that what Doran drew was so compelling he scrapped all dialogue for those few pages, and the choice is excellent. Comics are, as we all know, a visual medium, and expository writing or duplicative dialogue can puncture an emotional experience if the text interferes with the art. The scene moves from a single page splash to another that zooms in on particular photos: Jack and his wife on vacation, Jack and his wife at their wedding and photos with both of them and their daughter. The photos tell a story of love, happiness and loss without a lick of dialogue, and the 9-panel grid that follows these two pages functions to accelerate time and get at how overwhelming and non-linear grief can be. The page is balanced well, and a good reminder of what this technique should accomplish in comics.

These three pages are a very welcome interlude and are why the issue is an overall success. Hawkins’ writing is full of medical jargon and politics, and the structure and detail level are more suited to a prose story than a comic when paired with the somewhat humdrum settings of a very familiar world. There’s not enough that’s visually intriguing in the book’s design to support the plot until this particular moment. Hawkins’s choice to trust Doran is one more comics writers should model, frankly.

The overall style and art execution in “The Clock” is decent. Doran favors some heavy inking that doesn’t always work – the rumpled sheets in the spreads mentioned above have an almost aggressive, craggy texture because the shading is too heavy, and it’s an odd effect. The evening car chase scene is weird and surreal thanks to a good blend of Valenza’s moodier palette and Doran’s expressive line. Doran eschews some background detail in favor of big action lines and bubbles of light that mirror the car’s headlights to create a stylized, high-action page. The comic is at its most interesting in these moments of contrast, tension and, again, wordless action. In the daylight, however, character facial details can break down quickly in establishing panels, and the final page features a horrified expression and skewed anatomy for Jack that are more comical than tragic. Hawkins and Doran intend the moment to bring the haunted, hunted tone to its natural peak, but the Greek tragedy-level melodrama of the art doesn’t support the intended horror and poignancy.

Valenza does drab labs and government buildings well enough, with a touch of slickness and marker-style color layering to help Doran’s line pop. There are moments when these strokes and smears of color work well, and others where they feel a bit too loose to support the book’s grim tone. The chase scene mentioned above is a moment where the blinding lights, blues and blacks merge well to build great mood, but the daytime scenes feel unmoored and surreal in a way that clashes with the book’s straight-ahead setting and plot points. Doran and Valenza’s synergy in that car chase scene hints at what this book could really do given some creative license with the here and now. “The Clock” might go there in future issues, but right now we’re treading water in a tense kind of realism that doesn’t always work.

Continued below

As stated previously, Hawkins gives Peteri plenty to do on the page, and the borderless balloons work better in this issue when they’re butted against a panel border. The font’s pretty standard, but there’s a nice rounded quality to some of the letters that makes it interesting to read. The balloons are somewhat irregular, which doesn’t become an issue until we have a chunk of dialogue to fit in a smaller panel, as when Jack’s colleague calls him from the lab to reveal a key plot point about his wife’s DNA sample. Peteri has to pad as little as possible to accommodate the text without obliterating the character’s legs or the counter above, and that need makes the irregular balloon edges appear a bit wonky.

Overall, “The Clock” is interesting, and there are moments when we break with recognizable daily life to experience something a bit more abstract and interesting. Hawkins would do well to let the book breathe a bit. The world and Jack’s daughter’s life hang in the balance, and there’s an intriguing mystery to solve. This comic could really shine if the team heads in a more surreal or abstract direction, but time will tell.

Final Verdict: 6.5 – “The Clock” #2 stumbles a bit in its balance of expository dialogue and artistic flair, but rights the ship with a few good moments.


Christa Harader

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