There’s a lot going on in Pisces #1, but you might not know that after you look at it. Interviews with writer Kurtis Wiebe indicate that it’s an exploration of PTSD and body horror; the book itself doesn’t reveal much more than a jumbled mess.
The book follows Dillon, a war veteran, astronaut, and drunk, as he more or less stumbles through every situation he’s put into as they, individually, go belly-up. We’re not given a lot to go on with Dillon other than that he’s a drunk, and he was in a war, and he went into space at some point. He has no particular personality, and, as noted, he just seems to stumble from situation to situation. We can pick out that he has an anger problem, but not much more.
Wiebe’s dialog doesn’t do much to push the story along; it’s generic, and a little exposition-heavy from point-to-point. The idea that this Pisces is supposed to be horror also gets lost somewhere; there are slightly creepy images, but it seems to be an after-thought, more than anything. We can gather from his stumbling that the character Dillon has something of an identity crisis, but so does the book; it meanders aimlessly from idea to idea without much — some might argue, any — cohesion.
Johnnie Christmas’ art is a saving grace. He’s an excellent draftsman and cartoonist, adding a lot of personality to a story that’s desperately lacking it. His facial expressions come from the Kevin Maguire school, which is always a good thing. His attention to detail is also quite strong; note the shattered car window in the crash scene at the beginning, and the glass in Dillon’s face, haphazard. His layouts range from very flashy to very basic, and when he does flashy, he does it very well; unfortunately, the story doesn’t do the lifting it should be doing to show us why we’re getting these layouts. This is not a request for spoon-feeding so much as a request for coherence.
There could be potential down the road for this book if it lives up to the shoes the writer has decided to put it in, but as a first issue, this is a failure. The last page stands as one of the worst of the year; it’s disjoint from the rest of the story and offers less of a “what the !@$!” then a “huh?” — the idea was, ostensibly, to leave the reader asking questions and wanting to come back. It does not accomplish this. In an era where we’re seeing more and more writing for the eventual collected edition, this shows us how bad a single issue can be, and, quite frankly, how hard first issues can be.
