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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Filet of Soul, May 1, 2004
This review is from: Midnight Nation (Paperback)
Cop's soul is sttolen. Cop is not pleased. He goes for a long walk to get it back. Yes, I'm leaving out a lot of the good bits (Laurel) but I don't want to be a spoilsport. One reviewer compared this to Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" because of the "slipping between the cracks" lost people imagery. It's not a stolen idea, or if it was it was stolen from someone else a long, long time ago. It's a recurring theme in societies with large populations. There have always been and probably always will be people who just get lost. It's a frightening thing to us. My opinion: I really liked this one. It's dark, but not obscure. The darkness in this comic is not gratuitous or unnecessarily violent or just there to get some emotions stirred up in people. It's crafted and placed and worked into something that's like wrought iron. And the themes in it; the things that people in despair think, the hopelessness; those are real things. The fear, the stories about going nowhere, those are real. It's like holding two strong magnets with their oposite poles together. You see nothing but you can really feel it, like a shape made by that unseen force that has a texture. You expect your fingers to be able to touch it but there's nothing there; you can only feel how it's making the things you hold react. This story doens't put all the ideas in but you can feel them, taste them, see them by their lack. They are as clear as the patch of paper left unbleached when you take a picture off old wallpaper. There's temptation and despair and anger, and a little humor. There's the dregs of your soul and what keeps you going even when you've got nothing left. Duty, but it's never named. It really touched some feelings in me. It's real art. But like art, different people will see differnt things in it and some will see nothing at all; the art that will touch them is not the same as the art that touches me. I could say that some people will get it and others won't, but that sounds patronizing. And people throughout their lives change; someone might get it at one point and then not get it later... You see what I mean, and that's more a rant about art than about this comic in particular. My favorite part is that for all the social themes there's not a hint of patronization or holier-than-thou attitude in the tone of this book, and I can smell that bull a mile off.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable, October 13, 2003
This review is from: Midnight Nation (Paperback)
Detective David Gray, LAPD, is investigating what he thinks is just another gangland murder, until he finds himself slipping into a second world beneath the world he knows. He is being pursued by brutal creatures known as "The Men" and is befriended by a group of transients and bums who, like David, have fallen between the cracks of society. It is here that David learns the horrifying truth about what has happened to him -- "The Men" have stolen his soul, and he has less than twelve months to walk from Los Angeles to New York and reclaim it, or he will become one of them. Straczynski is a brilliant storyteller and Frank was the perfect choice to illustrate this graphic novel. It shifts from scary to hauntingly beautiful without missing a beat, and the climax is nothing short of remarkable. It's truly a masterpiece of the form.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The devil you know? He's worse than the devil you don't., March 3, 2003
This review is from: Midnight Nation (Paperback)
Midnight Nation is a heavily allegorical comic book that draws on classic biblical themes to tell a story about people who "fall through the cracks" in life. Although it starts off as a straight-foward story about a man who journies to reclaim his soul (at least, straightfoward for JMS), it evolves simultaneously into a much bigger story, and a far more subtle one. Included is my all-time favorite single issue of any comic book, "The Devil You Know" (issue #4). JMS isn't known for having many stories with an obvious moral in them, so when he does include one, he makes sure it's good. In short, JMS uses the world he created extremely well to tell a story about the dangers of fear and not accepting responsibility for your life. (But that brief summary doesn't even begin to do this issue justice.) Although "The Devil You Know" can almost stand alone from the rest of the book, the moral in it sets the stage for the entire series, and defines what Midnight Nation all about. I highly recomend this book. Once it gets going in the later issues it you can really see it distance itself from other comic books, and presents a far more subtle and well crafted story than even JMS is typically known for.
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