1 out of 5

Uh huh.  This was shockingly bad.

Acknowledged: Jay Gunn has artistic chops.  His characters are weighty and human, and his panels are fully backgrounded and rich with life and color.  He’s also able to stray off the path to draw some nifty beasties; in Surface Tension, its various creepos that begin to emerge from the watery depths after strange coral formations appear around the planet and mesmerize 99% of the population into walking into the sea… before which their skin get all cool and melty, which Gunn also depicts in grody glory with verve.  But his art has a downside to it: it enters that uncanny valley of realism that sometimes happens with painted and computer art, where the figures seem too clearly drawn from real life that they oddly look… stiff, eyes forever focusing on some elsewhere element that locks any given emotion into a variation of “vacant,” and odd facial reactions – like robots overreacting in their inability to understand human emotions.  Blend this with occasionally wretched scripting and dialogue and questionable framing, and those art chops work against the book as much as anything else, just one more off element to sink (no pun no pun) Surface Tension.

Let’s touch back on that plot: Gunn starts our story after this has occurred, in the small island town of Breith.  Two blue-skinned human figures emerge from the water, then Gunn cuts away to introduce us to some other primaries on the island who drop some key plot details – they’re cut off from the world, resources are dwindling – before returning to these figures, who turn out to be prior inhabitants of Breith, and are summarily quarantined until the town can figure out if their blue skin is part of the mesmerizing “sea sickness,” and what their reappearance means, and etcetera.  A granola woman is sent into the quarantine, and she starts to get some of the story.  The pacing is already a little quirky at this point – Jay has a tendency to drift to some seemingly related panels between scenes that don’t clearly enhance the scenes before or after – but Surface is presented with a sort of open, as-is voice, so it works to establish an odd juxtaposition of peace and tragedy.  The same goes for the art’s problems, mentioned above: it’s odd looking, but at the moment, matches the book’s general tone.  It’s when one of the returned begins to flashback that some flags go up: it’s the story of the first appearance of the strange coral, and it involves references to how we’re fucking up the environment and the water around the coral is crystal clear and yadda yadda.  Is this gonna be a goddammned “humans ruin the planet and the planet has responded” tree hugging book?  Thankfully, a crazy ass monster shows up to curb these fears somewhat, and gives us hope for the second issue.

And that monster does some interesting stuff in the second issue, but the ecological nonsense similarly trudges on, and that slightly off tone starts turning the corner toward dumb.  Jay spends the rest of the series muddled in flashbacks that explain the reason for the coral… for no good reason, and “open, as-is voice” starts sounding ham-fisted and lazy.  The construction of ‘Surface Tension’ quickly reveals itself as having been spun out of an opening scene, as I can’t really fathom the necessity for nesting the remaining story in flashbacks, making actual events in the book only occur over the course of a day or so.  The imbalance of the world building stacks up next to the amateur story-telling: we’re told that the island is isolated, and that 99% of the population is gone, but for some reason, it never feels like it.  Everything about the way ST ends up being presented is to suck out – ironically – all of the tension.  There are no stakes, and to combat that, characters make ham-fisted, half-sensible proclamations.

And maybe the extra kick in the pants that makes me actively dislike it is the environmental angle.  It’s just so obvious from the start, and Jay doesn’t really do all that much to spin it (besides taking an explanation tactic – that I won’t spoil – that is the equivalent of waving one’s hands and saying “magic!”).  In summary: Surface Tension reads like a high school art project, with a studied art style that’s good but doesn’t feel at all natural, and a plot full of “meaning” and all that those quotes imply, “subplots” borne out of padding necessity, and dialogue written by someone with a tin ear.

Me: nice guy.