Written by Herik Hanna
Art by Charlie Adlard
Published by Image Comics
When I originally got this book in hand, I was truly excited. I really love the artwork of Charlie Adlard and the work he does in the field of horror. Certainly his work on The Walking Dead comic will insure that his art remains in print always.
But I really loved his artwork on the book Vampire State Building as well, probably more so. It had a silly title but my god, his work was epic on it. It is one of those horror books that you can’t really look away from.
So, I was very excited to pick this up. Sadly, I was definitely disappointed with this book. There are many reasons behind that but the big reason is that the book is just plain boring. And that’s the worst crime for any story.
Now keep in mind Charlie Adlard‘s work is still very good. He really captures the 1960s very well and evokes a nice atmosphere with his artwork. There is a nice feel to the book as far as character design and page layout.
So why is this book so flat? Well, firstly, the characters of the book are pretty much non entities for most of the book. They exist and they have names, sure. But there really is nothing that makes any of these characters stand out or relatable. They all sort of just blend together until you don’t care about any of them. That makes this book a bit impenetrable and hard to like. Once you add in the fact that there is very little forward momentum, it gets pretty dull pretty quickly. It never recovers from that either.
A lot of the book is following this gang of kids in a van on a drive to the concert at Altamont. This Scooby gang of characters are pretty interchangeable. I guess the main character is a girl named Jenny. She is one the paper thin plot kind of circles around. Much like the film Midsommar, we get to see this gang of kids hang out on this journey. They get pulled over at one point on the road. They checked by the police for drugs but they don’t see to have any! Are they going to be sober the entire trip? Oops, apparently not as one of the gang keeps drugs in the heel of their boot. Thank god for that!
So we get to see the gang take drugs and go off on the road to the concert. They remain high and there are some really unmemorable conversations that happen along the way. They get to the concert and everyone is taking drugs. The artwork at the concert seems to evoke a sort of evil scene happening? But alas it is just more drugs and people acting dumb. It almost felt like there was very little forward momentum or any momentum at all.
That is until an act of violence happens. The act of violence is pretty muddy. It is hard to tell exactly what happened. But it also seems that the creative team might have planned it to be some sort of conclusion to the book? To me, it felt more like an ending to Act One instead. Yet, that is where this story comes from close to ending. It is very vague and not even the least bit shocking. I just was left cold by it all.
There is one last scene in the book. Basically the story shifts to the present day. We get a lot of dialogue about what that incident actually was. And we get to see some kind of retribution and resolution to it. It feels like this ending is tacked on. Is there going to be a second volume? Is this just the first like the title says? I hope to god there is a second chapter or more because if this is the ending, I imagine a lot of people will be left scratching their heads like me.
The artwork is the reason to but this book. Charlie Adlard is truly a treasure. I just don’t know what appealed to him about it. Maybe there will be future volumes that make this more satisfying. Right now, I am unsure why they felt the need to create this.
RATING: C
