The Eye Collector #3 // Review
Nathan wanted to know what the man wanted. Clearly he must have wanted something. But for some reason, he didn’t want the mane to know that he wanted to know what the man wanted. It was no use, though: somehow the man just...knew. And there wasn’t anything that Nathan was going to be able to do about it. Nathan is going to have considerable difficulty in The Eye Collector #3. Writer Jonathan Ball and artist GMB Chomichuk cotinue their surrealistic horror story with typically dreamy fashion, form and style. The nightmare begins to get serious about establishing itself in the latest issue.
The man identified himself as Nathan’s friend. He told Nathan that he just wanted to help him. He identified himself as Coppelius. He tells Nathan that he’s helping his father. He wants to help Nathan as well. Perhaps Nathan wants a brother. (He seemed to be offering him that.) Or maybe there was some sort of a girl at school that he might be interested in. Perhaps Nathan would want that. Coppelius seemed to be able to give Nathan a great deal. Nathan didn’t say anything. It was all a bit of an eerie experience for Nathan.
Ball’s story continues along its dreamy path as Nathan tries to deal with strange encounters and stranger stories. Ball continues to hold together the narrative with a cartilage of surrealistic nightmare that feels caught somewhere between dream and myth. There’s a powerful sense of deeper allegory about what it is that he’s bringing to the page, but it’s very, very difficult to find a solid place from which to view it all. There isn’t enough fundamental emotion to really drive the story. Nathan seems like a nice enough kid, but the narrative isn’t allowing itself to get close enough for the reader to feel a whole lot of empathy with him just yet.
The visuals continue to appeal. There are moments that hit the page like a fusion between old clip art and something from a scanning electron micrograph. There are parts of it that feel like perfectly poised, emotionally enaging rendering in black, which and eerie shades of blue and green. It all feels quite impressive on the page even if it all kind of blurs together in the blare of the surrealism, It never quite hits the page the way that it really needs to in order to make any substantial, non-spectral impact.
The overall earrings of it is appealing enough to have the sickly green shades feel cool and refreshing a missed the power of a black-and-white. And this is as clear in the visual as it is in memoir abstract sense. There are cool and appealing elements to the dialogue and narrative that seemed to fly across the surface of something much darker and deeper. It’s all a great deal of fun in the right frame of mind. In the wrong frame of mind...it’s just kind of forgettable...and quickly fades in the flashing strangeness of a passing dream.
