Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Tony S. Daniel, Tomeu Morey
Published by Image Comics
Last issue I got tired of lead character Val “Sundog” Riggs’ hard-boiled cynical, 1990s grunge-style wake up and smell the nightmare, normies narration.
But Nocterra #3 pulls it back a bit to reveal a more interesting character: Someone hardened by her traumatic life who still is looking for a reason to believe in a better day.
That person had to be lurking within somewhere, because she did see her life get better once.
She was adopted out of that orphanage to a loving home, and her eyesight was surgically restored (if we want to call that a positive, trying to avoid ableism here).
However, I knew more must be happening beneath the surface mainly because of her adoptive little brother Emory.
She already knows Em is infected by the darkness and will turn into a Shade monster. Yet she’s on this haul out of some hope that the refuge with a solar simulator, promised by Doc, actually exists and can heal Em before it’s too late.
She doesn’t exactly believe it, but she wants to. Perhaps an act of will makes the fantasy real.
That’s the core issue of this issue, as seen through the eyes of the girl traveling with Doc, his granddaughter, Bailey. Val yells at the kid that she sun’s never coming back, and Bailey replies that she’s too young to have ever seen daylight. But she believes in Doc’s words of the chance for the world to come through the Big PM brighter than before.
That’s not to say this comic book is all about big, squishy feelings. It delivers on action, too, as the story’s main action picks up at Blacktop Bill chasing down Val’s truck. We go Fast and Furious with stunts, car-based weaponry, and explosions, plus an outcome that drops more story breadcrumbs for the reader.
Blacktop Bill himself is, well, terrifying. Why does he have a tricked-out Lamborghini? Who is his death squad rolling with him? What is his connection to Doc? Is he old? Is he young? How is he a living silhouette with nothing but his white teeth visible on his body?
So far, our villain has me hooked. And in the case of this issue, he likes hooking people, literally.
If there’s one thing I would change in the series so far, I would drop the single page that’s all black except for a few boxes of Val’s narration and the number of miles traveled so far. I don’t buy a comic book to not see art on the pages, and this artistic choice isn’t good enough. It comes off as comics aping a TV show trick, and it doesn’t work for me.
That said, the issue is very strong work that balances out the hard-boiled cynicism of the lead character with heart by seeing how devoted Val is to her brother.
