Mind the Gap #8

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo

As this series continues, I find that my enjoyment of it only grows.  This issue has a lot happening in it - coma patient Elle's time borrowing the body of young Katie comes to a close, but this time has been very productive in terms of helping us understand what is going on.

It's been clear for a little while that Min, Elle's mother, is behind the attack that put her in the hospital, and that she's working for or with someone only referred to as 'The Fifth', but this issue also makes  clear the extent to which her father is involved, and how he feels about that.

The further we get into this series, the more impressed I am with the way in which Jim McCann's characters exert themselves on the page.  This is a complicated series, but each character has a distinctive voice, and that is a huge part of the book's success.  I've begun to care about what happens to Min, and to look forward to seeing some of these other characters get what they deserve.  I still find Dr. Geller the most compelling person in the book.

Rodin Esquejo's art is fantastic, but I find that every time he chooses not to centre a panel on the principal characters, it's because there is some kind of clue there.  Many panels in this comic focus on a person's shoulder or just cuts off their faces, as if Esquejo wanted to save time by not drawing their expressions.  Or because he is trying to point something out.  It's that kind of book - you find yourself always questioning what information is being given to you.  Really, that's the appeal.

Mind the Gap #7

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo

In this issue, Ellis, who is in a coma, has woken up in the body of Katie, a young girl who was just taken off of life support.  Her good friend Jo arrives, and they try to talk, but as is to be expected in this sort of situation, all hell breaks loose in the hospital.  Jo tries to get some rest, makes friends with the nurse that has been helpful, meets the assistant to a psychiatrist who is also in a coma, and tries to help Ellis escape when she sees the guy in the hoodie who attacked her in the hospital corridor.

In other words, a lot happens in this issue, and McCann handles the pace very well, so it never seems like there is too much happening.  More hints as to what is really going on are being dropped all over the place - Ellis's mother almost gives herself away as being involved, and I'm sure there are a number of hints being dropped in the analysis of the statements Ellis first made when she woke up.

One of those really stood out though, when the nurse attributed the phrase 'sleeping furiously' to "a long-dead guy, Chomsky".  When exactly did Noam Chomsky die?  And why doesn't the internet seem to know about it (I just checked my facts)?  Up until this point, no reference was made in this book that made it seem like it was taking place in the future.  Now, with a comic like this, I start to wonder if perhaps this isn't a mistake on Jim McCann's part, but is in fact a clue.  Or, conversely, perhaps no one needs to check facts on a book like this, since errors can just be treated as red herrings that ultimately don't lead anywhere.  Still, it confused me.

I like this comic, and am enjoying the mystery of what happened to Ellis.  I do find some of Jo's judgement to be pretty questionable in this issue, but McCann already explains some of that by showing us just how exhausted she is.  Rodin Esquejo's art is lovely, but in the scene where Jo finds Dane's father sitting by Ellis's bed, I had no idea who he was at first, as he looks like a few other people in this book.  Otherwise, a solid issue.

Mind the Gap #6

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo

I'm really glad I chose to stick with Jim McCann's Mind the Gap.  Around the third and fourth issue, I was beginning to worry that this series was just a little too pleased with its own cleverness, and I found myself losing interest, but between last issue's flashback story, and this month's excitement, I'm really getting wrapped up in this book.

Elle has been in her coma for a while now, and she's started to figure out how she can place her consciousness in the bodies of other, recently deceased, coma victims.  She is asked by a young girl, Katie Lawrence, who was taken off life support, to go and make sure that the secret behind her 'accident' is revealed.

Elle does this, and is able to make a phone call to her best friend Jo, while in Katie's body.  She's found by Katie's family though, and all hell breaks loose in the hospital.  There is a very cool scene where Katie's body, being taken to an MRI room, accompanied by Dr. Geller, almost collides with Elle's, who is also being taken for imaging by her doctor.  The two victims have the same brain wave patterns, and exhibit other synchronized actions.  It's a very creepy scene.

Also in this issue, we learn a little more about what happened to Elle, and what role her mother and her doctor play in it.  Katie/Elle is yelling gibberish in the hallway (it reminds me of the libretto to much of Phillip Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach), but in light of her mother's conversation with the doctor, I think that McCann is dropping some major clues.

Now that McCann has stopped pointing out his own cleverness in the text page, and is not filling the book with long psycho-babble scenes in The Garden, I find it much easier to get swept up in this story.  I'm completely invested in figuring out what happened to Elle, and just who is responsible for what, and I look forward to the next issue.

Mind the Gap #5

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo and Adrian Alphona

Do you ever have this happen to you, where you make some comments (okay, maybe they were complaints) about a comic one month, only to have them addressed the next?  After reading the last issue of Mind the Gap, I commented that I found certain aspects of the book - especially the scenes where Elle, the coma victim, just hangs out in her own mind and The Garden, a shared mindscape for coma victims, and the overly self-congratulatory text pages in the back - to be tiring me out, and causing me to lose enthusiasm for the title.

Then this issue comes out, and neither thing is in it!  Instead of keeping the action in the hospital where Elle is staying, Jim McCann decided to use this issue to explore one of the most important people in Elle's life.  Dane is Elle's boyfriend, and he's been shown to be a difficult person.  Now, he is being accused of attacking her, and his own father has shown up with some pretty damning evidence against him.

The thing is, Dane hasn't seen his father in some ten years.  Most of this issue is told through flashback, as we see Dane's teenage years in a trailer park, where he lived with his abusive drunk of a father.  At age 17, Dane set off on his own, eventually finding himself in New York, and dating Elle.  For the first time since the comic began, Dane is shown as a sympathetic character.

We are also given some pretty big clues as to what has been happening in this series.  The whole point of this book is that the reader has no clue as to who attacked Elle, or why.  One fairly prominent character is shown interacting with 'Hoodie', the hooded character who has been present at every point of the series, although whether or not that character is ultimately responsible for what's happened isn't made clear.  I imagine that there are more than one guilty party in this book.

I've been enjoying Rodin Esquejo's art in this series, but was pleased to see that (the uncredited) Adrian Alphona showed up to draw the scenes from Dane's life.  Alphona's art is much looser than Esquejo's, and had a total Adam Pollina vibe to it that I liked a lot.

This is a comic that was in need of a shake-up, and I'm pleased that McCann chose to do that at precisely the time that I was wondering how committed I was to staying with this title.  Now he's got me on board for a few more months.

Mind the Gap #4

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo

I want to be very clear - I enjoy Mind the Gap a great deal, and appreciate what a unique comic it is.  I'm having some problems with it though.  It tells the story of Elle, a young woman who was attacked in a New York subway station, and is now lying in a coma in the hospital.

That doesn't sound like a comic in which much would happen, but Jim McCann is taking Elle's tragedy and weaving a dense and complex mystery around her - we don't know who attacked her, but just about everyone we've met, from her family, her sort-of boyfriend, a psychiatrist who is now in a coma in the bed next to her's, and possibly even the doctor treating her seem like likely suspects, or are perhaps complicit in what happened.  Working to figure things out (so far, independently) are Jo, Elle's best friend, a doctor who works at the same hospital and has been warned away from her case, and Elle herself, who is spending her time in The Garden, a place she shares with her fellow coma victims.

My problem with the book is that it's becoming a little too precious in it's "Everyone's a suspect!  Everything's a clue!" self-boosterism.  I love and appreciate the various clues that McCann is leaving for us, but I don't know that it's so necessary for him to draw our attention to them.  Personally, I would prefer it if, at some moment when a revelation is made, that it's left to me to figure out whether or not it had been foreshadowed.  Or, you know, the Internet could tell me later.  A good point of comparison would be Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Each page is filled with allusions, nods, and easter eggs, but Moore doesn't fill half the book explaining them.  That's left to people like Jess Nevins on-line, and that works for me.

It's a minor quibble.  This book is very interesting, although I find my attention wandered this issue during the lengthy scene that takes place in The Garden (or in Elle's mind).  I prefer reading about her friends, family, and the goings-on at the hospital.

Rodin Esquejo is turning in some very strong work with this book, although I have to wonder what's going on with the art nouveau-homage covers lately - for a moment, I thought that my comic store had put a copy of last month's Elephantmen in my pull-file.

Mind the Gap #3

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo and Sonia Oback

The thought of building a series around a woman in a coma sounds a little boring, doesn't it?  Yet, Mind The Gap is anything but, as Jim McCann continues to weave a strange web of deceit and conspiracy around Elle as she lies in her hospital bed, doing everything she can to contact the world outside of her mind.

This issue doesn't build as much on the mysteries of the last two, and instead introduces other new story elements, such as the house that Elle retreats to in The Garden, the shared mindspace of other coma victims, and the Memory Wall, upon which she is able to project some of the shards of her shattered mind.

As this series progresses, I find that I want to see much more of Dr. Geller than I do any other character, but that's mostly because she has been the most proactive, in trying to treat Elle, and in trying to figure out what is going on with her colleague, Dr. Hammond, who seems to be working his own agenda here.

The story is smooth, as is Rodin Esquejo's art.  I'm also really liking the variant covers to this series (Esquejo's covers look too much like issues of Morning Glories), especially Skottie Young's contribution this month.

Mind the Gap #2

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo and Sonia Oback

I enjoyed the first issue of Mind the Gap enough to come back for a second look at things, and I'm glad I did.  Jim McCann has designed this story (so he tells us) so that every page has a clue as to the big picture of what is really going on in this comic, and I find that kind of thing pretty intriguing.

What we do know is that Elle is still in her coma, and that almost everyone in her circle of family and friends are behaving suspiciously, suggesting that any one of them could be behind the attack on her.  Meanwhile, Elle's consciousness is in The Garden, communicating with other coma patients.  Somehow, she manages to enter the body of one of them in the moments before his death, and now she wants to explore this ability.

This is a very intriguing series.  The character work is top-notch, and the addition of a police officer to the mix, who seems to be working on a related matter and who is married to the doctor that raised her suspicions about Elle's treatment last issue gives us an idea of who the heroes of this comic will likely turn out to be.  McCann writes these two characters very well.

Artwise, Rodin Esquejo continues to impress.  Sonia Oback's art is another matter though - there are a couple of pages featuring two characters talking outside a darkened theatre that are so muddy as to be impossible to see.

I'm definitely adding this comic to my pull-list now - McCann has sucked me into the story enough that I want to continue with it.

Mind the Gap #1

Written by Jim McCann
Art by Rodin Esquejo and Sonia Oback

I wasn't sure if this new series was for me or not, but I'm always willing to sample an extra-sized first issue when it's released at a regular price, so I gave this a try.

Jim McCann's Mind the Gap is definitely different, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to read it a second time to figure out some of the nuances of this comic, but it has me pretty intrigued right now.  The book opens with a series of phone calls, as friends and family of Ellis Peterssen, an actress (I assume) and beautiful young woman suffers some sort of attack at a subway station.  She is taken to a hospital, where she is in a coma.

There's a lot more going on than just that though.  It's clear that the attack on Ellis was planned, and is part of some larger group of events that have been set into motion.  A number of the people standing vigil around Ellis's bedside appear suspicious.  Her brother is a jerk, and really, so is her boyfriend.  There is a dust-up between two doctors over Ellis's treatment, and what information is being kept in her file compared to what is on her chart.

Oh yah, and Ellis is kind of hovering over her body watching the whole thing; at least she is until she meets another phantom, who is also in a coma somewhere, and is there to school Ellis on the whole situation.

There's a lot happening in this comic, and its structure makes me think of the more recent vogue in television dramas of embracing weirdness and portioning out information over a long period of time (Lost being the best example).  In a lot of ways, this feels as much like a TV pilot as it does the beginning of a comics series, but I'm okay with that.

Rodin Esquero's art is lovely.  He's best known for his covers on the brilliant Morning Glories (which, in terms of tone, is similar to this book), and he does a good job with the various emotions that Ellis's circle feels while standing at her bed.  I'm definitely going to be getting the next issue of this.