INJECTION

ELLIS | SHALVEY | BELLAIRE

I would occasionally describe myself as a broody person; I like staring out rainy windows thinking to the outside world, 'if you only knew'.  But thinking in italics is not my only broody inclination, I also enjoy comics with dark covers and a single, small, isolated figure walking away from you, the kind of comic that bitingly whispers, 'if you only knew.'  This was my mood as I picked up Injection.  It's something that had crossed my path before because it passes the cover test (aka 'does the cover drag me in) so, I inevitably follow up with my second test, the flip through, where I blatantly and unashamedly quickly flip through the book. Meh.  I don't like how the artist draws female faces, especially for what I surmised was the main character whose bulging eyes are a little too bulgy and whose under-eye bags comforted me that other people really do get as little sleep as me.  But, you know, it was just a broody kind of day and I decided to risk it because, hell, that's a pretty great cover and also because I was picking it up every. single. goddam. time I walked into that comic store and I just wanted it to end.  Perhaps some part of my brain was telling me it was a broody kind of day, because the rest of my brain was certainly not into it.  

Sigh.  

Injection was not what I was expecting from my cursory perusal.  I wasn't expecting a female protagonist and I certainly wasn't expecting the plot line.  In fact, even after starting to read it, I didn't even understand what the plot line was.  I knew there was something mysterious and incredible somewhere in the background but it took a while for it to come out.  This comic tries so impressively hard to avoid exposition.  So hard in fact, that you don't even understand what happened until the fifth chapter and even then you don't understand why it's happening until the fifth to last page of the volume.  I'll give them credit for the incredible suspense and mystery they build up, but they harp on it for too long and where I was looking for relief they were giving me dramatic...pauses.  At the very end, they present to the reader a truly fantastic, wonderful, haunting idea but by that time I was already bored so although I did love the moment, it didn't change my opinion of the book overall.  Out of the five key characters, I liked the main one the least although it could have just been how she was drawn, I was far more interested in the four others which were given far less attention. 

My initial observation was correct, the artist just does not understand the female face so they tended to be inconsistent and frightening in a way that distanced the viewer as opposed to drawing them into the character's pain.  The coloring did not help him out in these situations but you can thank the colorist for the general feel of the book, which is what initially drew me in.  But this book was just so broody that, even in my own broody state, made me want to yell at the characters to get their shit together.  Get all their shit and put it in a backpack so it's just all together.  They need to get their shit together.

If you love the brooding tortured hero that will literally not tell you what's wrong, then this book's got five and I suggest you read it.