Comeback #3

Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Michael Walsh

Ed Brisson's time travel intrigue story Comeback has been an interesting read from the beginning, and as the series progresses, Brisson is providing some more information, but also adding new wrinkles to the story.

Reconnect is a company that can travel through time within a sixty-six day window (I don't know why yet).  They use this technology to rescue rich people from death, and take them into the near future to be reunited with their families, all for a very large fee.  The thing is, that's not exactly what happens, and Seth, one of the field agents, has gone to the FBI, and contacted his past self to try to put a stop to things.  Seth's partner is in the uncomfortable position of having to hunt him down, and now their latest client is also refusing to cooperate.

Brisson is the type of writer who leaves a lot of this for the reader to figure out, avoiding lengthy explanations and text pieces in the back of the book.  That works well here, as it adds complexity to the story, and maintains a greater sense of mystery throughout the series.  Michael Walsh is a capable artist in the Paul Azaceta/Tonci Zonjic school, and the book is a good read, giving us a fresh take on time travel stories.

Comeback #2

Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Michael Walsh

Comeback is an odd beast of a mini-series.  Writer Ed Brisson is playing with some interesting ideas, but is also refusing to spell things out, leaving the reader to connect dots all over the place to fully understand the story.

This series is about Reconnect, a company which travels back in time (no more than 66 days) to pluck loved ones away from accidents or disasters, to save their lives.  They, for reasons we don't understand yet, have to make it look like the accident still happened so that there is no problem with the timeline.  In the first issue, we met two of their agents, Mark and Seth.  Seth has not been feeling well, and has decided to quit.  We also got intimations that the company was being investigated, but we weren't told by whom.

With this issue, we get some answers, as we discover that the FBI is fully aware of time travel, as apparently are medical examiners, and that one agent in particular has been spending a couple of years trying to put a stop to Reconnect.  We also get a fair number of new mysteries, as Seth 'Freedom 55s' himself, showing up to tell his slightly younger self a few things about the company he works for (and, perhaps between panels, talks to him about the importance of buying life insurance).

What makes this book confusing is that I'm not always sure of who the characters are, or their relationships to one another.  As with many time travel books, it's also hard to tell what sequence we are reading the stories in; is young Seth the 'now' character?  How far up the line is older Seth?  I'm sure this is something that will be made clear, but these are the things I wonder about while I read the comic.

Ed Brisson is a writer that I have come to admire, but this is the longest story of his that I've read so far, and I can see where the pacing is at times a little off.  Still, I have trust that this series is going to all make sense in the long run, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Comeback #1

Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Michael Walsh

Ed Brisson has impressed me on a few occasions with his excellent short crime stories in his self-published series Murder Book, which seems to come out about once a year (and which has featured this series's artist, Michael Walsh).  Brisson writes some fantastically dark stories in that series, so I knew I'd be in for something mysterious in this, which to the best of my knowledge is his first mini-series.

Brisson plays things very close to the vest here.  I found that I learned more about the structure of this series from reading the 'next issue' blurb on the back cover than I did reading this first issue, but that's okay, because Brisson and Walsh are masters of creating atmosphere.

The comic opens with two men knocking on the door of an older man, claiming they represent the hydro company.  In no time, they have forced their way into the home, and have abducted the man.  He is taken to an empty warehouse, where he is then exposed to a very bright light, which takes him some sixty days into the future.  The trip doesn't work well for the man.

The reader slowly figures out that these men work for a company called RECONNECT (actually, the company doesn't get named in the issue) that specializes in pulling people away from their imminent deaths.  This is not cheap - we see a new client pony up five million dollars to save his wife from a car accident.  Many of the mechanics of the operation are outlined here, but everything is kept a little bit obscure and oblique.  We do learn that one of the agents doesn't want to keep working for this company, and it looks like someone is investigating them, but we don't know a whole lot more than that.

There are a lot of mysteries introduced in this issue; perhaps a few too many, with no clear idea who the 'hero' of the story is going to be.  At the same time, I trust Brisson to pull this off.  Walsh's art is very nice, in the Paul Azaceta/Michael Lark school.  The feel of this book is terrific, and I look forward to seeing where it goes next.