3 out of 5

Covers Days Missing and Days Missing: Kestus

Yes, we need more quality sci-fi in comics – y’know, stuff that isn’t just a post-apocalytpic something-or-other, or time travel, or too soap opera-y (I’m diggin’ Saga, but no doubt it’s more sci-lite focusing on family stuff).  And Archaia is a publisher of beautiful looking books – thick pages, excellent, glossy colors – but the writing doesn’t always match the wonderful sheen.  Days Missing is a totally solid idea, dug up and presented under the Star Trek “Roddenberry” banner (because I guess Eugene Rodenberry and the creator work together…  but sticking that name on there reeks of just another branding deal), though its initial mini (Days Missing) is incredibly hit or miss with 4 different writers approaching the concept from oblique angles, and while ‘Kestus’ does better at establishing a world and some characters, it still primarily feels like testing the waters, and ends up being a delaying tactic for an upcoming (as of this writing) third series.  Days Missing – and this is sort of funny, given what the series is about – has a feel of perpetual delay, like the book is going to turn a corner next issue and really capitalize on some of its core ideas.  But I doubt it.  Unless Archaia can commit, perhaps, to an ongoing (doubtful, given the company’s shift toward putting out only collected books with just a couple guaranteed issue-by-issue series) and start opening up to readers about some of the “rules” of the Days Missing universe – creator Trevor Roth hints that they’re keeping the reader in the dark on purpose, but that ‘purpose’ seems suspiciously like him not exactly knowing the rules either – then Days Missing vol. 3 or 4 might be the kind of true sci-fi we need.  Instead, in its current form, it’s totes worth a read, but stunted overall.

The pitch is that we’re following “The Steward,” a seeming immortal who sits in an immense library – location/dimension unknown –  observing the evolution of the world (why only Earth..?) from day one through a portal lookin’ thing.  Besides some sick karate skills and no pupils and white hair and that immortality thing, The Steward has one ability – he can enter our plane of existence for a 24 hour period, a period which he can “fold” back upon itself as many times as needed, subtly influencing events… but his actual presence, once he takes his leave, will not be remembered.  Why?  Because Mr. Steward keeps witnessing things that he believes will curtail our progress as a species – whether it’s loss of knowledge or a more drastic loss of lives – and so he steps in to (mostly) indirectly intervene to get us back on course.  It seems that he experiences time linearly, so it’s unclear if he knows these things because he’s actually jumping around in time, or if just his vast amount of experience has made him a keen judge of how my writing comic book reviews is totally valuable to the planet.  “Days Missing” (volume 1) jumps between 5 different periods with 4 different writers, 5 artists, Phil Hester book-ending things.  Even though the series appears to be one shots with only The Steward tying it together, they drop a note into book 5 that hints that greater things are to come to tie certain events together.  Then in volume 2 we meet lil’ miss Kestus – who cannot fold time like The Steward, but she also seems to be immortal, and remembers Stewie when he comes and goes. Hester wrote this whole series, which is again, sort of one-shots – only this time we’re tracing a battle back and forth as Kestus is the cause of attempted derailments of humanity in each installment and The Steward the cure.  We again end with a lead-in to series 3 which picks up that dangling blurb from the end of series 1.

Hester waxes poetic on some pages, but his writing is solid enough to carry the book, his best issue being #5 of the original series, where he really gets to capitalize on the folding time idea.  Out of the other writers, David Hine (issue 2) does the best job of, again, actually using the concept and not just abusing the “all-knowing character outside of his time” angle that the majority of series 2 and the remaining series 1 issues do.  But – and I can’t freckin’ believe I’ve talked so much already so I’m stopping soon – all of the writing and art is par for comics.  There’s nothing really bad, nothing too glowing.  The artists do a good job with the material, but no one really goes bananas with any one concept for whatever reason (although a pre-Batman Chris Burnham on David Hine’s book admittedly gets the most fun characters to play with, so there’s that).  It’s the heart of the series that never fulfills its promise.  Leaving things unspoken is different from not knowing, and if the creator/s DO know what rules limit The Steward’s existence, they need to make that a bit more evident, because as it is, it just feels like a loose idea that we’re leaving dangling in the wind until we figure out how to fully inflate it.  There’s totally potential for it to be awesome, but there’s an equal amount of potential for it to go on forever without explaining anything, which is dumb OR turn it into some sci-fi thing we’ve seen a million times before.  Time may or may not tell.  I will be picking up the next series, but admittedly, with expectations set at mid-level.

Toots.