Coffin Bound #8 // Review
They’ve outlawed God...but in this case, God lives in a syringe, so things are a little confused. Taqa found solace in God. The church asked her to find a vulture who circles the dying. Now she’s dead. An old friend searches for her as the second story arc ends in Coffin Bound #8. Writer Dan Watters closes out the second four-issue stretch of his darkly poetic series brought to the page by artist Dani. Colorist Brad Simpson lends the latest chapter of the series depth and mood in and around the heavy inking of Dani’s shadows. Narrative coherence bleeds around the edges of the dark poetry in a satisfying eighth issue.
Doll is restless. She’s getting a call about a murder. It might be the voice of Entropy. Then Doll gets a call from the police. Doll’s a photographer (among other things.) She’s asked to be a crime scene photographer for the police. It turns out the crime scene that she’s being asked to photograph is the murder scene of her friend Taqa. Doll doesn’t know why she doesn’t mourn Taqa. She’s driven restless by the memory of her friend. She’s searching for answers that she just might find as the pages wind-down to the end of the second plot arc.
Watters’ strange poetics work wonders this issue. The phone conversation between Doll and the police is hauntingly weird. There is a phantom sense of familiarity between the two presumed strangers. Doll’s actual work as a crime scene photographer also makes for a memorably vivid and moody scene. There’s such a heavyweight to Doll’s journey this issue that it’s strange to think that she wasn’t the central character of the entire series thus far. It’s just a bald girl and her revolver looking for closure, but it’s very powerful stuff. The restless exhaustion of the series rolls slowly across the page as Doll does a moody post-mortem on the hero of the first three issues of the arc.
Doll is exquisitely beautiful. Dani works the magic with a pair of eyes, a pair of eyebrows, remarkably full lips, and the subtle suggestion of a nose. There’s a profound sense of emotional depth drawn into her face that serves as the central focus of much of the story. Blood and exhaustion poured into every panel in the heavy, foreboding ink work that surrounds Doll. Simpson’s dreamy pastels breathe a magical kind of fairy darkness into the depth of Dani’s visual poetry. It’s all so strikingly dark and beautiful at the same time.
Doll isn’t actually doing a whole lot this issue. It’s a moody journey for her, but there’s so much in it that feels so very, very weighty. Watters has sometimes submerged the series in so much poetry that any overall sense of plot feels hopelessly lost, but the final issue of the second plot arc comes across with the striking impact of an aesthetic body-blow. Given the center of the panel, Doll seems like a really compelling character. With any luck, she’ll be the central character of the next four-issue arc.
