4 out of 5

Originally issued in 3D as a hardcover GN, Archaia made the wise decision of offering up an issue-ized, non-3D edition for those of us who may have hesitated to plunk down hardcover cash on an uncertainty.  My hesitation extended a couple of steps beyond just the price, as I’d previously tried Ryan’s storytelling via Syndrome and found myself… underwhelmed.  Here was a great sci-fi tale, presented with Archaia’s grandeur and some excellent artwork, reduced to something of a standard thriller by tale’s end.  It’s a good story overall, but several rereads confirmed my underwhelm-ment: It just seems like the tale is gearing up for more and then suddenly it ends.

The same concept generally applies in Joyners, but an excellent review of the HC – which is focused on the 3D process and so has me considering points of 2D versus 3D interest in the story – mentioned one word that really helped me to re-set my interpretations: Noir.  That there’s a femme fatale, that poor choices are made, and that there’s a knife-twisting element to the storyline.  It’s all there.  Ryan still front-loads things with a bit too much philosophical wanderings to make a noir payoff fully successful, but it’s a pretty unique attempt at blending speculative fiction with the genre, so I’m willing to forgive its imperfections in favor of the experiment.  And yes, looking back, I can see how this in Syndrome as well, although that story blended its sci-fi with its observations more tightly, making the switch-up a bigger change.  In Joyners, science is the background to a flawed person – George Joyner – and flawed people are, like, noir’s bread and butter.

Yes, George Joyner, in a world of floating cities and flying cars; you’re not the first to point out the Jetsons reference, and it’s another good example of Ryan massaging his formula to encompass even more genre bits, such as satire; building off our nostalgia and David Marquez’s simple but refined art, the emotionless, commanding George and his world-changing ideas are far away from Jetson’s good-intentioned bumbling.  Their only shared trait, perhaps, is a dedication to the job, Ryan subverting the idealized nuclear family as one… that’s quite normal, actually, with a child with social anxiety, a despondent teen, and marital strife.

We flash back to George on the cusp of a new world-changing invention – interestingly never said aloud until story’s end, only shown, further seeming like a purposeful distancing between the science and the ‘actual’ subject matter – promised something menacing to come by a prologue feature Ms. Joyner finalizing her divorce.  But instead of acting as a simple play-by-play, we allow ourselves to get distracted by George’s internal monologue, which ground – for us – his cold exterior, making his eventual choices (like in a good noir) understandable, even if we see the tell-tale signs that something is amiss.

But again, be forewarned: That monologuing comes with some indirect introspection that suspiciously seems like Ryan may have other points on his agenda, and if you’re hoping for this to get delved into any further, you’ll probably be disappointed.  However, the general flow from page to page is so smooth, and the character interactions all so natural (relative to the book’s somewhat sterile tone and design sense) that its nowhere near a game-killing detraction.  If anything, the book’s sudden (if logical) ending gives one more time and headspace to chew on things for a bit.

The de-conversion to 2D goes off without a hitch, Kelly Diane Fitzpatrick’s added, muted colors a wonderfully wise choice.  There are some interesting artistic simplifications – most notably a lack of mouths in some scene – that may have been done to better support the 3D, but it all ends up perfectly matching the book’s general vibe, including Jon Adams’ mechanical font.  A lingering indication of this being a GN first, though, is that the chapters don’t cleanly divide, really, or at least don’t bow to the end-each-issue-conclusively conceit of comics.  Definitely better read in one go.

…Now to go back and re-read Syndrome.  And hope that it will be less than five years or whatever between books for Ryan, because now I’m madly curious what comes next.