4 out of 5

A gorgeous, precise mini-comic printed in shades of green, emphasizing its setting.

The cover could be said to spoil the comic: we see a bipedal robot, inspecting some tree-hanging fruit in the midst of foliage: our titular caretaker. Inside, this is done by bit-by-bit reveal – Emmons’ piecemeal visual style flashing around an enclosure, giving us shadowed glimpses of the robot, before it interacts with some wildlife that wants that dang fruit. It is a compliment to the artist’s talents that knowing what we’re looking does not undermine the impact of the way its rolled out in the pages; in fact, sort of understating the shape of the bot (and labeling it as a caretaker) I think helps to place us in the more observational spot in which we’re intended to be, instead of trying to puzzle out if this ‘bot is friend or foe.

Events lead the bot elsewhere. Emmons is the king of these wordless glimpses – stories that pack a lot of depth and emotional impact into only a few pages; Caretaker is one of his most streamlined efforts in that regard, including his preference for combining nature and technology.

The slightly lesser ranking is, as always, subjective: because of the oblique way in which Matt visualizes things, I’m not always sure what the intended focus of a panel is. Sometimes, that’s a limit in the printing method: the minimal color make some of the closeups a tad less flowy than the rest of the book, whereas full color might’ve allowed better eye direction. Very minor hiccups.