Oh, it's not at all weirdness for weirdness' sake; it's dark, accurate, nasty satire with a candy-coated shell. It's the West, specifically America, blissful ignorance in sunny, themed marinas.
But then, this is pretty much understood, so here's a random list of stuff that stood out for me:
"Nurse... to executioner" - a harbinger of things to come? Is Soyl... XOO really made of children? Will we meet some sort of Nurse/Harvester character? Echoes of Morrison's Myra Hindley fixation...
Is that chessboard nine-by-nine?
I didn't read Death's hair as Hitleresque but a combover, Greg Feely-style. Liked the Charon-in-Venice look as he poles off in his gondola.
She-Beard made me think of the 'Beard Hunter' Doom Patrol.
The amazing double-spread superhero battle. For some reason, the Flying Bomb jumped out at me. And the Anti-Dad's spiked halo was reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. Has liberty itself been vanquished? Did the heroes make a terrible mistake?
Seaguy's unbearable lightness of response when the Kiss-Me-Quick horse is killed. "Ouch. Guess we'd better hoof it".
Mickey Eye: really, really creeped me out, particularly the 'stomping on eggs' panel (the theme of consuming/destroying children again?) - and for some reason, the fact that he only has one arms added to the Brrr Quotient.
"And that's about as much news as anyone needs to hear! Hands up for fun!" Hey, who needs to know about bad stuff going on in the rest of the world?! And, for that matter, who gives a damn about the Moon, when we can buy ridiculous iron umbrellas?!
Mickey Eye Park is beautifully spookily rendered, clean and white and sterile (apart from the Future Swamp, with its 9/11 towers and crashed aircraft). Scared, crying kids and adults - and more of that oddly queasy lettering.
"Harsh and ashamed" sounded like a Morrissey bon mot.
Kidnapped children in the underground and on the big wheel (a literal London Eye?) but Chubby's seven-second memory probably isn't much different from anyone else's. No-one seems to notice.
I actually really liked Doc Hero's Alan Partridge 'sports casual' slacks and jumper, in tasteful Pringle pink. He's perhaps the most obvious example of the widespread tendency to ignore real issues/dangers/concerns in favour of synthetic thrills.
XOO looks like an axalotl (an amphibian which can remain indefinitely in the pre-adult phase) - which is, if deliberate, an interesting choice of symbol...
I love how the weather suddenly changes ("Did we just break da rules?") - and it strikes me that the skies are blue and cloudless until the Mickey Eye Park.
The Bumble-B sails up the Moon's path. Is this a battle between the Sun (or, at least, sunniness, the conscious mind, the aggressive male principle) and the Moon (water, tears, the darker stuff going on behind the facade of conscious perception, the female principle)? Am I reading into this too much?
I'm enjoying this a lot. The deceptively simple, kids' cartoon style (and yeah, I'm loving your work, Cameron) is nonetheless packed with detail, and very much repays multiple readings. It's all so spare, so efficient, not a line wasted. And the colouring is beautiful.
I think this is gonna be about children: maintaining ourselves in an idealised state of childlike innocence at the expense of others. I'm delighted this is gonna (hopefully) go on for three runs of three issues (the rule of three-times-three!) I don't think I've enjoyed Morrison's writing in quite this way since Flex Mentallo - and much of that is down to Cameron. |
