X Isle #2

Written by Andrew Cosby and Michael A. Nelson

Art by Greg Scott

 

The stranded on a desert isle, survivors' drama gets a strange, new twist in this Boom! Studios series. The plot follows a blueprint you've seen in dozens upon dozens of movies: A relatively large group of barely sketched characters, each with a character trait or two, are thrown into a strange, life-threatening situation and must rely on their own specialized areas of knowledge and experience to pull through. Although we know going in that most of them won't make it—that's why the cast is so large in the first place.

 

Writers Andrew Cosby and Michael A. Nelson throw in a twist, however. Their cast is a group of scientists, experts in their respective fields, being led by two hard-as-nails sailors with shady pasts (they seem to know how to use their shotguns really, really well, for example). "I know how to take care of myself in a jungle, lady" one of them tells the botanist.

 

The thing is, this jungle is unlike any ever encountered by any human before. Everything the scientists and the sailors know is useless when it comes to this island, which has developed in complete isolation from the rest of the world to the point where it's completely alien—the plants and animals are like nothing ever encountered by science, past or present.

 

The flora and fauna is hardly friendly. The creatures glimpsed in #1's cliffhanger (which looked like a cross between the monsters from tremors with one of Lovecraft's shoggoths) go on the offensive here, and later a killer tree is encountered, one that's much scarier than the apple-throwing bullies that harassed Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. The greatest dangers, however, might come from within the group itself, which starts to fracture more quickly the greater the danger becomes.

 

Cosby and Nelson's characterization is pretty derivative and obvious, and the plotline is a pot-boiling one—it's easy to imagine this story being told as a cheap, crappy Hollywood movie released in late summer—but their twist makes it plenty interesting. And the pair sure know how to close a comic book, with issue #2 ending with the same sort of dramatic cliffhanger that the first one did, practically compelling you to pick up the next issue.

 

Gregg Scott's art is realistic and ink-heavy, with a certain Alex Maleev-ishness or Michael Gaydos-ness about it. It's not jaw-droppingly detailed or inventive, but that serves the story better. Because the characters and settings all look so real, when a killer tentacle-thing or tree wanders onto panel, it seems all the more shocking and fantastic.

 

Rating - 6