1 out of 5

I’m sorry, Mr. Vidaurri: Iscariot was an obnoxious read that had me gaping in astonishment at its heavy-handedness.

Now, on the surface, this is one appealing book: Archaia’s high-end presentation of a delightfully undersized (6″ x 9″ ish) hardcover with solid construction and binding; gorgeous, thick paper stock to show off Vidaurri’s alluring pastel-ish water colors; interest-piquing end papers of a crumbled statue; the slogan “True magic comes at a cost” on the back; and a flip-through promising a somber tone full of thoughtful glances and conclusion-less statements…  This all suggests the type of kid-lit of which there should be more: respectful of the reader’s intelligence, and not offering empty promises of hope and happy endings.  Smiles are fine, of course, but a dash of reality is healthy now and then as well, and delivered via fantasy can be an absolutely effective avenue.

I was ready to dive in.  The opening prologue was a bit confusing, showing us the transfer of magic from a master – Zeosh – to a child, Iscariot, and the art had a troublesome quality to it I couldn’t pin down.  Vidaurri’s framing is fascinating (somewhat akin to Buckingham’s use of it in Fables, but with a more poetic application, like P. Craig Russell), and the colors are swoon-worthy in their subtle blends but accurate application, and the looseness of the art – though there are some straight lines that we can chuckle over their crookedness, and some postures or expressions that look a little stiff – has a certain flow to it that seems to match the fantasy… but still, something was off.  I went back over the pages a few times and pieced it together: Vidaurri is constantly doing figurative shots, either cut-aways to the scenery in-between beats of dialogue (like Mignola’s mood-setting panels in Hellboy), or almost like hitting “pause” on his moment to zoom in on a pose or detail he apparently felt emphasized something in the moment.  And, at least to me, it’s horribly disruptive.  The cut-aways because they seem to show the same scene but the details are mixed up (mountains move, perspectives change); it’s not abstract enough to register as something else, so my brain tries to tie it to the other panels and fails, and the “pauses” because, well, it’s not a damn movie.  The zoom effect just doesn’t work the same way with the timing of the panels as S.M. has lain out the page, and added to this is the same detail mix-up problem with the cut-aways, so it feels like you’re looking at a moment out of sequence, or perhaps different moments, different people.

Ah, you think, a dreamy narrative with surreal gaps dotted in.  Sure, that’s a favorable interpretation.  And sort of how I was taking it for the prologue.  Until I got to the incompetent scripting of the main story and the repugnantly dumb poems that precede each section.

Years later, Carson has cancer.  An older Zeosh visits her in the hospital for some reason, and this all has to do with the passing on of magic a la that prologue.  But there are problems back in floating mountain land, from whence Zeosh comes, surrounding how that magic is going to be passed on.  And I’ve just done you the favor of wading through a hundred pages of stalled narrative during which Vidaurri fails to give us reasons to watch this drama unfold, or fails to establish characters beyond their additions to the plot (Zeosh is difficult!  Carson likes birds!  Carson’s mom drinks!), or even fails to tell us whether Carson is a god damned girl or boy, which you can’t much tell from that loose art.  Carson’s mom looks like a character in the magic lands?  Surely it has meaning!  Nope; we just have several characters who look exactly the same.  Also hard to tell if they’re girls or guys.  Well how about the explanation found in this poem?: “Of all the harm done / The worst is the embrace / Clothed in a coat of thorns / That says / Everything will be okay.”  Helpful?  A wee bit pretentious, you say?  H’yeah.  Artistic license and all, but coats of thorns can’t speak, and not sure why I’d let a personified coat embrace me, but whatevs, now I’m being a jerk.  The point is, the narrative is littered with stuff like this, “meaningful” words, and soon enough Vidaurri takes to preaching in one-line Statements!, while still drifting into those distracting between-panel moments.  And as the story tries to reach a climax with a wizard battle, S.M. just can’t keep up art-wise.  The look is fine for dialogue, but action is sloppy, and the thick-lined style requires crowd scenes with a lot going on to be reduced to block characters.  It’s just not exciting.

Ugh.  It really just seems like Vidaurri bit off more than he could chew, or perhaps just didn’t choose the right approach for his story.  Either way, what seems to be an affecting contemplation on life and death ends up feeling, unfortunately, preachy and sloppy, early missteps in the tale’s construction kicking me way out of the realm of caring before the required pages pass to give us the small nuggets of plot Iscariot has, but fails to develop once this exposition dump is finally released, and the blocked up remainder of the story can spew out onto the concluding pages.

(Dream of likening a reading experience to constipation and diarrhea: check aaand check.)