Testify
Finally had a chance to read the comics I bought a couple weeks ago, or some of them anyways. INFINITE CRISIS still manages to float to the top of the pile for some reason. Probably because I keep hoping for a shock or surprise to come along and gobsmack me. I'm convinced that it's going to happen sooner or later in this series, but it hasn't yet. So far, it's managed not to surprise or hit me with anything out of left field. But like a sucker, I keep coming back to it.
Close on the heels of reading IC, was the first issue of TESTAMENT, a new series by Douglas Rushkoff (who is apparently a Marshall McLuhan award winner--not that I even knew there was such an award) and Liam Sharp (who's also busy with EVENT HORIZON these days). I've been interested in checking out the book since it was announced back at SDCC last year (as well as a few of the other new, seemingly reinvigorated Vertigo books. And with a pull quote from Grant Morrison at the top, I seem to be ground zero in their target audience. We'll see if that holds true.
True to what I'd heard about the book earlier, we're presented with parallel narratives, one thread in biblical times--Abraham and the sacrifice of his son, the other in a near-future millieu rooted strongly in the cyberpunk tradition. Heh. Cyberpunk tradition. Kinda ironic when you mull that one over, eh? I mean, they were so iconoclastic, those young men with their mirrorshades. Not only are they parallel narratives, but more accurately, mirror narratives, each dealing with a father in a position of authority who's called on to sacrifice their sons (to the authorities that they serve). Though in one case, the impending sarcifice is literal (Abraham and Isaac in the biblical past) and the other figurative (Alan and his son Jacob). In the present day scenario, what's asked of the son is a chip being implanted under his skin, so that the smiley-faced Big Brother can keep better tabs on him, the implication that such is equivalent to servitude, if not walking death.
It's a common theme, maybe one of the ur-themes of literature/entertainment in the last couple hundred years: the choice between easy servitude or bucking authority. In the near-future scenario, we're presented with the unseen, yet frightening overlords of conformity or a ragtag band of artists and counter-revolutionaries experimenting with drugs. Another common theme. It's presented interestingly enough, but it's stuff I've seen before.
The only thing that's really making it stand out is the interlinking between the ancient and the now (or ten years from now.) That's most apparent in the last two pages, which is easily the highlight of the book, interlocking the two story threads and promising much more, by way of ancient gods moving through modern proxies, mixing ancient mysticism with black ops tech. Sharp's framing of the two threads is handled beautifully here, and gives me a lot of hope for something fresh coming out of the play of familiar themes.
But man, the single format is going to make reading this murder. I guess I'm spoiled, as the last great mystical conspiracy comic I read, that being THE INVISIBLES, I read as complete volumes so that I could keep everything straight, and get BIG CHUNKS of story at once. Makes me wonder if REX MUNDI, which is another similar book, would read better in the trades, even with the interminable wait between them.
At any rate, I've got hopes for TESTAMENT. It's not as pyrotechnic or dense as THE INVISIBLES, but Sharp's art does well by the story, well enough that I'll be following the story as it unfolds.