Klik Klik Boom #1 // Review
She’s got pink hair. A backpack. Black and white striped tights. She’s carrying a Polaroid camera. And a gun. She walks into a bank. Thus begins the mystery in Klik Klik Boom. Writer Doug Wagner and artist Doug Dabbs open a deeply compelling mystery with a whole lot of captivatingly jagged, little details. The contemporary metropolitan mystery clings to every corner of the page in long, static moments that occasionally explode into cleverly-framed moments of action. One of the most promising comics to debut in the summer of 2023 arrives in stylish fashion thanks to the writer behind such series as Plastic, Plush, and Vinyl.
She walked into Second National Bank with a gun. She was just going to leave a bunch of pictures of the old guy the way she usually does, but there were a couple of people waiting for her. Those people also had guns. They opened fire. So did she. A couple of guys are in the hospital now, and there’s at least one podcaster who is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, which seems to involve a rather large corporation and a whole bunch of unanswered questions. The podcaster pops by the corporate headquarters to look for a few answers. They’re expecting her...
Wagner plays with some interesting iconography. A journalist who can only seem to meet with success with her voice on a podcast runs into a woman who cannot speak. The woman might be the only one capable of answering her questions, but to do so, she’s going to have to speak with more than just Polaroids, as corporate goons have come to silence her. It’s all so simple, but there’s so much depth to what Wagner is weaving together in the first issue of a very promising series.
Dabbs frames the mystery with deeply engaging angles. Motion makes its way across the page with some sharp framing. The vertical four-panel stack outside Second National Bank for the inciting incident is gorgeous. The mystery girl with the Polaroid has so much complexity written into her face. The contrast between her and the very verbal podcaster makes a brilliant contrast on the page. Dabbs’s architectural renderings in the background gorgeously deliver tone, mood, and setting without overpowering the mystery and drama in the foreground. The visual parallel between the two heroines is cleverly emphasized in subtle ways. Podcaster wears a black-and-white striped top. Polaroid woman wears black-and-white striped tights. There’s so much depth to the visuals.
Wagner and Dabbs conjure a brilliantly expressive first issue with some primal bits of characterization in a mystery that is carefully and painstakingly bound to the page. It may lack the kind of heavy text and rendering that so often accompanies a first issue, but Klik Klik Boom delivers more actual story in a single issue than many titles manage in three. It’s a very promising start for Wagner and Dabbs.
