Of the several editions of Big Books that I am reading during social distancing, The Big Book of the Unexplained was the one I was looking forward to the most. And it was the most disappointing.
Written by the creator of Deathlok, Doug Moench, I was really excited to read this collection of accounts of the strange and unknown. I love UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and all that paranormal stuff that has us stymied. I'm the type of person that feels that there's got to big a hint of truth to these accounts. They may not be what we think they are or happened how we might recall the events occurred. But I am sure a lot of it was real events.
The host of this book is Charles Fort, a research of the paranormal and macabre around the turn of the 20th century. Had I not read within the past year or so a book about the Fortean Times, I probably wouldn't have any idea who he was. But I did and I appreciated his appearances throughout the book. Well, at first.
However, Moench keeps having Charles Fort talking about this cosmic trickster. And he keeps getting all whimsical and philosophical about this being. Maybe he's talking about God or gods. But that's beside the point. Moench devotes a lot of his time to this powerful being instead of focusing on what I was hoping for- lots and lots of accounts of the unexplained.
While I appreciate the use of a narrator or host, they haven't seemed to really work in the Big Books. The 70s book had a host and it was the weakest part of that entire volume. I feel the same about Fort here. But unlike in the 70s book where the host was only at the beginning of each chapter, Charles Fort is at the beginning and ending of each section. Rod Sterling or even Jack Palance, he is not!
When it focuses on the unusual, it's good. But it goes off on tangents a lot!
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
Writer: Matt Nixon
Art and Cover: Toby Cypress
Published by Image Comics
Everything you know about the invasion of Iraq is a lie.
Instead of trying to find weapons of mass destruction, the US military was attempting to stop Saddam Hussein from utilizing genies! Every time a dictator uses the supernatural to take over the world, our government sends in a special unit of paranormal operatives to end the threat. Then the Pentagon retcons the events to the media as military actions!
When a retired alcoholic member of these paranormal forces, suffering from PTSD, falls off the wagon, he threatens to expose the whole operation. That’s where Brandon Ross, a former member of the Paranormal Ops, comic in. Ross accepts the mission to bring the rogue agent down in hopes of expunging his criminal record. But when civilian lives are to be used as collateral damage without thought to perpetuate the retcon lie, Ross too goes rogue. And that’s when things start to go pear-shaped…
The first issue of Retcon is one that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Writer Matt Nixon (Motel Hell) crafts a story that I was hooked as soon as they mentioned genies. That was like page 3 or 4. But with a name like Retcon, I know that the history changes of the government is just the tip of the iceberg. I expect future issues to dive deep into the conspiracy of that the American history we believe in so dearly didn’t really occur as we were told.
The artwork was a different story. It’s very, very rough stuff. The illustrations of Blue Estate’s Toby Cypress are dirty as art can be. There’s nothing clean here. Part of that works because the story itself is a about the mess of lies made by conspirators and generals. However, it’s also done in such a way, that I’m not fully convinced what I was supposed to see is what actually happens. If I’m right, then I think I’ve got a problem with Retcon.
While I want to stick with this series, I’m going to wait until the trade before I go further. There's an extensive interview in the back of the comic. There, the series creators Nixon and Cyrpess promise to reboot the story often in a sense that Retcon is like a gritty version of Groundhog Day. I really fear that I am going to miss out on so much if I wait every month for the next chapter.This comic is going to require re-reading previous issues to keep details, which I expect to be retconned frequently, straight. Truly, this series might work best as a multi-volume graphic novel, released quarterly in larger chunks than a 32-page monthly.
Retcon is a series that has great promise.
But it’s going to be such a head trip that the monthly format might hurt sales. I wouldn’t even get attached to any of these characters as by next month, they might not really existed anymore. By having chunks of this story be retconned monthly might anger some to readers. I foresee it get to to the point that the readers might just not only lost in the plot. They may up and lose interest in the book over time. We shall see...
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
Article originally published September 14, 2017 on outrightgeekery.com.
