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.