2 out of 5

You take a stroll through the back matter of this comic from Italian imprint GG Studio, and you’re likely to notice the frequent typos – common for small publishers of translated books, but a little embarrassing when they appear on ads begging for advertising – as well as noting that every book they’re promoting seems to be stuck in the Image-influenced “bad girl” years of comics: Plenty of gross ‘sex appeal’ via waif-waisted, giant-boobed, ridiculously attired ladies posed with guns and what not.  You also might note constant promises of “issue X guaranteed…”, indicating scheduling woes.  If you assumed GG wasn’t long for the world, reality has seemed to bear out your assumption.

Flip back to the cover of the six part Skeleton Story: the little Tim Burton kid with the big eyes and the friendly color palette and cutely affected lead – a skeleton in a trench coat – indicate this is a kid’s story.  It is.  And I only highlight that tonal discrepancy with the publisher because there is an omnipresent ‘offness’ to Skeleton Story – its intentions aren’t really clear – that make it a weird read.  Also to maybe bear in mind: Creator Alessandro Rak is a filmmaker, and Skeleton Story started as a film pitch.  Visual appeal lain atop a morally simplistic and otherwise plot-thin tale may have that origin to blame.

All that preamble is already sort of a review, innit?

…we get a shot of Will Mucil, getaway driver for a robbery that ends with the getaway car driving off a cliff and into a lake.  Whoops.  Rak’s filmic sensibilties do get us off to an interesting start:  Will awakes in his submerged wreck, now a skeleton, and dreamily underwater-walks his way to a train car that has friends and family.  The train car fills up with water… then cut and reopen on skeleton Will, a detective in a city filled with other skeleton and monsters patrons.  This is a very poetic way to transition us to the land of the dead.

Most of the poetry ends there.

Rak somewhat bumbles his way through a mythology: Lady death runs things via a police force, (of which will is a member) and when signs of life show up – a cat, a little girl – its priority number one to rid the land of such signs.  Which kicks off a hunt, causing will to cross paths with some less scrupulous policers, his old robbery pals, and some other random denizens of the realm.  And along the way, yadda yadda, learn something about ‘the meaning of life,’ which results in many an eye-rolling platitudes.

None of which are earned through the story.

Will occasionally flashes back to his past, contemplating what brought him here, but Rak never really clarifies or even suggests what “here” is all about.  It’s indirectly referenced as hell, and yet there appears to be no downside to it we would associate with that.  The only difference seems to be that people aren’t alive, but otherwise they have lives – jobs, homes, friends.  They can relax and sign songs and get drunk.  It’s not clear why the living are so offensive to Lady Death, except by assumption of their opposing nature.  It’s not clear what the more scurrilous agents if the police force hope to accomplish; it’s not clear what Will’s ex-thieve pals want to do with the money, as they’re painted as shallow crooks on one page, then ‘power to the people / money is nothing’ rhetoric spouters the next.

But oh, the power of children…

Right.

Skeleton Story is a pleasant read.  The visuals are buoyant and bright, if rendered more for film appeal than a comic.  You can follow the gist id the story easily because it doesn’t require much thought.  The flip side of this, of course, is that if you do try to think about it… there ain’t much there beneath the buoyancy.