Change #1

Written by Ales Kot
Art by Morgan Jeske

I'd skipped Ales Kot's debut, Wild Children, because I'd read some pretty negative reviews.  Change, his new mini-series, however, received some positive buzz, and I was attracted to Morgan Jeske's art, so I thought I'd pick this up and give it a try.

I'm not all that sure I understand what's going on in it, but I'm definitely interested.  We are introduced to three characters with this issue - W-2 is a very rich, very popular rapper, who dreams of making it big as a movie mogul.  He has an idea for a film about him and his ex-girlfriend's Cthulu-baby, but he's having a very hard time making the screenplay for it work.  He's hired Sonia, a wannabe screenwriter, but by the third page of the comic, he's fired her, and she's stolen his car.  Both of these characters end up getting attacked by what looks like cultists before the issue ends.

We also are sort-of introduced to an astronaut who is returning to Earth after having travelled to one of Jupiter's moons.  Something seems strange about him, but we don't know what just yet.

This book has a bit of a Ted McKeever vibe to it, story-wise, which means that I'm not all that surprised that I don't understand the narrative flow completely.  A second, and perhaps third reading is called for. I do like the way Kot writes this though, and I'm interested enough in the story to come back for the second issue.

A lot of the credit for that goes to Morgan Jeske, whose art reminds me of Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, and Rafael Grampá, which is high praise indeed.

There are a number of mysteries to be solved in this comic, and I do hope that the second issue works to clarify the story a little better, but I still see this as a very successful start to a new series by some new talent.