3 out of 5

There are plenty of examples of people not using the comics medium properly: they come from TV or elsewhere and write the book like that type of script, getting the pacing wrong; they write it big and bold and widescreen when some minutiae might do the trick; they forget to write characters; and etcetera.  Just like any format, it takes a seasoned hand to know how to take full advantage of it.  Tet is, perhaps, the first comic that flips this equation: definitely written for the medium, and well paced and framed by its creators… but probably would have been much more effective as a film or television episode.  It’s a mini character drama, and while there are plenty of books that do the humble thing and do it well, Tet would have benefited from a more palpable silence and slowness that a moving image could have embellished.  Allor has crafted some effective dialogue, the scenes just don’t land without the breath and weight of human delivery; artist Paul Tucker has an appropriately raw art style for the genre, but again, I can “see” this as richer through various lensing techniques.

Tet is intended to be a mash-up of mystery and romance, seeds sewn during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (I’m not a history person, so feel free to look that up on your own time) and followed up in the 80s, with our love-lorn lead Eugene heading back to ‘Nam to find out what happened… both with a case he’d been helping to investigate, and with the girl who he left behind.  There really are some smart story elements wended in that tie some difficult themes and threads together, communicated with verbosity but believable so, and it hints at the inherent intelligence of Allor’s writing that initially caught my eye (yes, in the Turtles books of all places) but that turned out to not be a consistent thing.  Unfortunately, the time and genre split are what end up hobbling the impact, especially at its brief four issue length; spreading the story out could have strengthened our connection to Eugene.  Tucker’s color flourishes are also unnecessary, the flatness – when it deviates from a comparatively natural scheme – making the art look particularly cheap and highlighting how rough it is.

Tet is a valid story, but as structured, it’s unfortunately doesn’t feel like a comic book was the right home for it.