3 out of 5

You caught me: I haven’t done my research.  Is Tomboy a limited series or an ongoing?  The first batch if issues led me to assuming the latter, but Goodwin starts to get rather storyline heavy here in a way that suggests a near convergence and / or comeuppance.  Will our supernatural avenging Halloween-masked demon fight the violent fight against future enemies, or will the puzzle with Ambidrex – the drug perhaps responsible for expanding conscious minds to encompass these demons – complete and bring the story to a conclusion?

I bring this up first because these issues feel particularly unfocused – or perhaps sporadically focused – hopping between characters and turning gears all pretty much related to the same thing and offing some more people in the process but, somehow, not feeling like they move things along significantly.  And with Action Lab packaging these into four issue trades (which is why I’m reviewing them as such) but there not being clear chapter breaks – each issue bearing a unique subtitle – it confuses if we should be expecting more or less at this point.  I realize I should let the story speak for itself and I am in the sense that its spoken, and confused me, requiring much flipping back and forth to settle character names with their roles in the story and digging up the other issues to see if I remember things accurately or not.  Whether or not the tale is intended to be ongoing wouldn’t really affect this, but maybe I’d be more willing to coast in my confusion if I felt like we still had a long ways to go.

Anyhow.  Addison kills some more and Goodwin edges her toward slightly more unhinged.  The DA and the ME get tangled up in covered-up research, and Irene Trent finds herself avoiding the tangled strands of the messy web she’s weaving.  And we get a page or so more digging into Addy’s pathology mythology, but truly only that.  Otherwise its a lot of back and forth of information exchange and bolded names, Goodwin trying to keep her cast as clear as possible…

The dialogue maintains that balance between natural and informative, and, as mentioned, Addison’s increasing madness is well portrayed.  However, all of the scenes might as well be taking place in several stories, and the characters located in different universes; I was half-convinced that I’d incorrectly recalled that Mark was Addison’s father until they had a brief scene together.  There’s just so much story-churning being done here that Goodwin loses her grip on immersion; each interaction feels wholly unlinked to the others, despite discussing / involving shared events.

I’ve just ragged in this for sentences, but Tomboy remains an appealing book.  Goodwin’s cartoonish style with colorist Michelle Wong’s slightly-sickly pastel palette create the right slightly-off Saturday morning X-Men cartoon vibe that works perfectly with the book’s blood n’ guts n’ the color pink thing.  And all of the narrative efforts are impressive attempts to expand the world and give it reason to exist instead of just fantasizing about a killer teenager.  This second “arc” might be disparate in construction, and its very possible that will continue.  But the point is that the overall quality of the title, and clear thoughtfulness regarding the story, helps to make it succeed even with its narrative woes.  So for what its worth: I do hope its an ongoing that we have a chance to stick with for a while.