Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
The Surface #1
Image Comics
Kot, Foss, Bellaire & Muller
The Surface is a science-fiction, sociological, political, futuristic comic book that provides an extremely dense initial read. The book features stunning visuals and an ambitious plot and high concept. The story is mostly about three people that are looking a place called The Surface. In a world where everyone's lives are totally exposed all the time, this place offers an escape from the mundane, everyday life that no longer feels real to those living in it. The book is going to have a dedicated following but this is clearly not a comic book for everyone. I recommend giving this a chance on the possibility that you might connect with it.
The lead characters, Mark, Nasia and Gomez are lovers that decide to embark on a journey to look for The Surface. Their motivations seem to sway within the issue, but it appears they range from simple curiosity to boredom to looking for the keys to the universe. They figure out a way to stay unplugged in a world where every move a person makes is recorded for public consumption. The characters have other ties that allows for some subplots.
The comic takes a couple of sidetracks. One of which, is that the President is the estranged father of one of the leads. The dynamic isn't explored much beyond establishing that the President is a jerk and the kid has resentment towards him. Other subplots pop up here and there to show the reader there is more going on than a simple quest story.
The book has a lot working against it. Primarily, the lead characters are lifeless. This could very well be by design to punctuate the information overload that the characters are faced with in this world where everything is fed to them constantly. However, the scene that makes this seem that this isn't by plan is when one of the characters explodes because another character purchases a sugary coffee. But when pillow talk is extensive dialogue about atoms originating from exploding stars and the science behind it you have three boring and uninteresting characters. They were also terribly indistinguishable from one another.
Another problem I had with the book was the scenes trying to jam too much information in them. The book is all over the place from the Chinese in Africa to domestic policy on terror to social networks to Arab politics to privacy, piracy, to hackers to drug use. The book was dumping more information on the reader than it could possibly require. While it seems obvious Kot is trying to give the reader a solid read for their money, he could have used an editor or someone to reign in this issue's information dump on the reader. Some of the dialogue boxes seem to have been better served as captions. Some of the dialogue isn't something that conversations seem capable of ever producing.
Finally, the book has no pace to it. Naturally a ton of dialogue will slow the pace down, but this is also because of the scene switching. The book jumps to random scenes occasionally without ever tying them back to anything tangible. It's a tough read to slog through.
The artwork is a highlight. The comic does portray almost no emotion with the characters, which supports the idea that these characters are indistinct individuals because of their environment and not because of an oversight by the creators. The pencils are very detailed and the imagination used to create the world is a true highlight. The comic book definitely tells a wonderful visual story regardless of the lifeless characters.
The Surface may very well become a smash hit. It might also have a cult following that swears to the genius of the story. Either way I do not believe this comic is for everyone. For me, it throws too many ideas and dumps too much information on a reader that a single issue could possibly support. When you back that up with three uninteresting characters you have a very difficult read to get through. I liked the artwork a lot but it wasn't enough to get the story to rise to a level that I found interesting. Take a chance and you might fall in love with this comic book. At $3.50 for twenty-eight pages you get a bargain no matter how much you enjoy the comic.
2 out of 5 Geek Goggles
