Nocterra: Nemesis Special // Review
Emory has an unwanted guest in his mind. It’s not anything that he can outrun, but there’s almost definitely something chasing him. A swarm of shades isn’t far away. He can deal with the guest within later. For now, he’s got to avoid the shades before they have a chance to strike. He’s going to find it quite a bit more difficult than it would seem in Nocterra: Nemesis Special. The writing team of Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel weave a dark cosmology with artist Liam Sharp. Antagonism between a mortal and a being of great power is always tricky to bring to the page. Snyder, Daniel, and Sharp do a pretty good job of keeping it interesting.
It refers to Emory as a friend. Appears like a white grin in the darkness. It’s asking him where he’s going. He’s trying to keep it out of his head for long enough to survive, but there’s way too much going on for him to do so. It’s asking him about light and darkness, and it’s telling him a hell of a lot more. Something about the Nemesis Theory. Something about extinctions. Something that it’s trying to warn him about.
Snyder and Daniel have a solid handle on a very earthbound sense of life-or-death survival with Emory. That much is really clear from the beginning of the issue, which is really, really important as it is the central conflict that drives the entire issue. Things get a little bit shaky when they start to draw in Nemesis Theory and dark matter and...well..a lot of other things that are all a bit of a mishmash. It’s kind of cool to see some of the weirder elements of astrophysics drawn into the plot of the book, but it scarcely feels strong enough to carry an entire one-shot comic. They’re straining just a little bit too much to try to keep it all together.
As convoluted as the cosmology ends up being, it really does a solidly poetic job of propping up the art, which is gorgeous throughout the book. There’s a nightmare reality that Emory is going through. In places, it feels like traditional folk horror, and in places, it feels kind of deliciously Lovecraftian. The colors that Sharp is working with feel darkly electric, at times overcoming the substance of the story to reach into something a hell of a lot more primal than anything that Snyder and Daniel are working with. It’s very powerful stuff in places...almost suggesting something much more ominous than even Snyder and Daniel are capable of bringing to the page.
It’s beautiful and fantastically dark in places, but there simply isn’t enough holding it together to make it feel like a coherent story. The pursuit is interesting, but so much of what Emory is going through lacks the kind of direction that would make for a compelling trip between two covers of a single comic book.
