Hyde Street #6 // Review
Miss Goodbody can’t leve her health food store. Pranky is going to take advantage of that. He’s got enough sould to send him straight back to the real world beyond the street, but he’s not interested in doing so. All he wants to do is make life miserable for everyone else. After all...this is his domain and he’s in control. He’s playing around in that domain in Hyde Street #6. Writer Geoff Johns and artist Francis Portella continue to explore a strange street of the damned with colorist Brad Anderson. Having explored a number of individual residents, Johns and company begin to push a few of them together as tensions rise.
Mr. X-Ray clearly can’t count on Miss Goodbody. He wants to get rid of Pranky, but he’s going to need to come up with some sort of a coalition to be able to do so. He doesn’t really have the aid of anyone who would be able to help him. Matinee Monster isn’t playing by anyone else’s rules. Doctor Ego would be more of a liability than an asset. Sister Hood is a con artist who would turn him down in an instant. While mulling all of this over, there’s the sound of a bus crash outside Mr. X-Ray’s window. Things could get interesting.
Johns has begun to move the plot deeper into its own mythology, which seems promising. For the most part, the first several issues in the series appeared to be something of an anthology series with Hyde Street itself serving as a sort of terrestrial Twilight Zone where weird and often horrifying things have a tendency to happen. As Johns begins to move matters more and more deeply into the machinery of the Hyde Street premise, it begins to transform a bit into something that might have a bit more thematic weight to it than the standard weird horror anthology rip-off.
Portella has a staggeringly sharp eye for detail that serves the visual world of Hyde Street quite well. The drama of the horror feels remarkably vivid under the pen of Portella. Anderson does a remarkable job of delivering an immersive atmosphere to the page without overpowering the highly detailed art that Portella is committing to the page. It’s sharp stuff throughout. The atmosphere of the coloring embellishes all of Portella’s detail in a way that pul the overall feel of the visuals away from the dizzying detail of Portella’s rendering. It’s impressive stuff.
Now that things are well and fully moving, Johns and company are able to explore the bigger aspects of Hyde Street, which could be great fun. Johns has delivered such a rich and textured ensemble on Hyde Street. It would be really cool to see a whole universe of Hyde Street titles with interlocking crossovers and things, but there just isn’t the kind of readership that would allow for that. Johns has a nice, little universe that he’s built for this series. Too bad there isn’t quite enough room for it all to fill its own covers on the rack.
