Copra #50 // Review
Boomer has arrived in New Orleans. He’s waiting for a woman who doesn’t know he’s waiting for her. When he confronts her, she reminds him that she told him to lose her number. He did. He just hasn’t forgotten her address. He left something with her that he wants back. He’s going to get a bit more than he’s looking for in Copra #50. Writer/artist Michel Fiffe reaches a major milestone with the latest installment of his long-running sci-fi hero series. Three narratives move their way across the page in a satisfying continuation of an open-ended serial.
Elsewhere, Sonia Stone is cleaning her home. She’s also clearing through a few things in her mind. Nice of her to take the opportunity to talk to the readers about it while she goes through her cleaning routine. She IS the head of a big government operation. She hasn’t got a whole lot of time to hang out with the reader, so it’s nice that she’s thought enough to do so for the 50th issue. Elsewhere still, Jimmy’s getting a call. They need him to come-in. He thought they needed him in the next day. They need him in now.
Fiffe’s storytelling is everything. The story itself...the one that’s actually being told in the long-running series...isn’t actually all that interesting. The storytelling is remarkably good, though. Fiffe frames a whole lot of backstory in interesting ways that move quite gracefully across the page. It’s not what he’s saying. It’s how he’s saying it. The story that Sonia’s telling isn’t inherently interesting. The fact that she’s talking directly to the reader about superhuman concerns while she’s cleaning her apartment? THAT’S fascinating as it puts everything fantastic solidly inside a very mundane context. It’s deeply captivating stuff.
As always, Fiffe’s art has a level of detail that feels absolutely hypnotic. There’s a real love for framing the right shots in just the right ways and there are some really genius bits of page layout that feel so striking that it’s almost easy to overlook them. As always...the simplicity of the color really drives home the very distinctive look of Fiffe’s art without over-rendering the depth. The artist isn’t trying to do anything with the color that isn’t inherently there in the ink. It’s such a pleasure to read that it’s easy to forget that there isn’t a whole lot the feels truly mmemorable about the heart of the story.
In a way it’s a GOOD thing that there isn’t more novelty or originality in the central plot. A more interesting basic premise would turn the readers’ attention away from how well he’s telling the story. Ideally a story like this would be good in conception AND execution, but that’s pretty rare. Better to nail the genius of the storytelling that fail to live-up to the potential of a truly brilliant idea. The series as a whole has been put together quite well as it reaches a major milestone.
