3 out of 5

Jova’s Harvest’s affect is muted by a few factors:

The top of the pyramid is that Steve Uy still sounds like something of a pompous jerk.  We’re told that the book we’ve just read is laced with a billion levels of depth, and that if we don’t ‘get’ it, it’s our fault, not his.  Nice.  We all love being told we’re idiots, it’s ever so much fun.

Layering down from this is the ‘god tongue’ with which Uy has his principles speak.  We’re lectured to that we’re not capable of reading rhyme if we’re expecting a rhythm or pattern in the words.  Fine, Uy, fuck you.  (‘So mature is your attack / that to you back / I’ll say fuck / a duck.’)  I’m not here to limit your self-imposed definitions of how gods would speak, but here is an observation as a reader: There’s meter, and there’s rhyme.  Rhyme isn’t easy; I can’t do it, and that’s what Uy is telling us, that fitting ‘precise’ dialogue (as he describes his words here and, previously, in ‘Feather’) to rhyming words must be frustrating as all get out.  There’s a reason that there are masterful poets out there and that it isn’t just a matter of getting a rhyming dictionary and wending your worries about wet dreams and clown nurses around sound-alike words.  Some have shown us how stretching the precepts of language can make for some great reading.  This is, of course, a narrow-minded, short list, but: Dr. Seuss, and… Garth Ennis’ Demon.  Both of those are examples where the style is applied generally humorously, sure, but in terms of making rhyming words into a necessary aspect of one’s story, Seuss is of course classic, and I was always astonished at how Ennis managed to find inventive and funny rhymes for Etrigan that both advanced the plot and made us chuckle and didn’t simply fall back on easy rhymes.  In both of these cases, there IS a rhythm to the words because there has to be in order to keep the flow moving.  Part of rhyme is rhythm.  We set music to it as well, if I’m not mistaken.

Then there’s meter.  Meter doesn’t have to rhyme, but meter is, duh, measured.  It’s balanced.  And that creates an internal rhythm, purposefully so.

So your gods speak in rhyme because you deem it thus.  Some deeper intention of god-speak sounding ‘musical’ or graceful, I suppose, but the implication on some level, to me, is that angels and demons have a way with words that counters the clumsy language of humans.  So why would they only speak in rhyme and not use meter or a rhythm?  Thus, my long-winded second point: the rhyme feels like only a half-thought out self-imposed rule, and when Uy ran into a roadblock where his MAD IMPORTANT DIALOGUE, YOU DUNDERHEADS wouldn’t fit into a 4×4 square, he ret-conned his own thinking and said fuck it and decided to have rhyming word balloons that have no sense of rhythm, except that where Steve decides to split the line, he makes sure to end the next one with a rhyme.  To make this clear, this means that instead of:

123rhyme

456rhyme

789rhyme

…or some derivation thereof, Mr. Uy has:

1rhyme

23456rhyme

rhyme

78rhyme

91011rhyme

…without any of those beats forming a meter, unless maybe the whole book is one giant meter in which case whoops sorry and you’re totally the genius you keep telling me you are.  Anyhow, I will allow that Steve does use a thankful minimum amount of words to say what he has to say, so I don’t disbelieve his efforts in trying to trim it down to only what’s needed, and as with ‘Feather,’ the writing generally does the task of plucking at a deeper thought, or making you smile, or the absence of words for panels seeming like proper pauses (which is a harder trick to pull off than it could be assumed, most widescreen comics taking all of three seconds to read, no forced waits via the design), and the rhyme ‘structure’ did seem to make Steve think through his lettering that much more – balloons are well-placed and break out of the panels at choice moments – but the lack of rhythm is a lack of rhythm and absolutely kills the flow at many points.  It’s like a record skipping, tapping your toe to a beat that stutters at unexpected moments.  Beep boop?

And one more complaint, again essentially flowing down from the ‘Steve is Amazing’ banner: ‘Feather’ stood on its own as a story, the ridiculous backstory that Uy assumed was communicated through osmosis or something not really mattering in terms of getting into the characters and feeling the emotional arc of the tale, but ‘Jova’ leans a bit more on its Uy-world connections, the epilogue especially tacked on just to treat the whole thing as a prequel to ‘Feather.’  Such prequel tie-ins have other precedents as being tricky ventures in that you can make your reader feel like what was just read was sort of just for naught. a distraction to get you to that last wink.  When I initially read ‘Jova’ before ‘Feather’ this of course didn’t matter as much, but reading the series in order takes away from the fascinating core story of the former.

Which is: Jova, harvester of ‘good souls,’ and his brother, Luci, harvester or ‘bad souls’ hang out on the barren land of Wigg’d.  Every millennium (or so), the duo fight over a ‘spike’ which tamps down the bad souls and keeps the world of humans healthy and Armageddon-less, as per dictates set down by God, their father.  Jova wields a massive hammer, Luci an axe, and this time around they get a visit from sis Elshana.  But Jova is unaware of some private dealings between ‘Shana and Luci, facilitated by messenger Hermes, who’s task – besides traveling ‘tween worlds and messengering – is to clean up after Jova’s harvesting, wiping the memories of the mortals whom have seen our lead get to work.  Jova’s missing out on these details plants the seeds for things spinning massively out of control over the three issues, causing him to question this history of battling over good and evil…  As with ‘Feather,’ Uy is great at taking a massive-scale story and boiling it down to fun and graspable interactions.  The art is more welcoming, despite not having ‘Feather’s massive set-pieces or characters or extended battles, as Uy ditched the repetitive computer backgrounds and effects for a more subtle and unique blending of the two styles, the foreground figures looking both strong and gentle, the backgrounds having a nice, earthy texture.  When the two layers can be seen to intersect (the pencils at the computer), it looks a little off, but the framing is generally pretty considered to mask this.  Once again, if you skip the editorial ‘Filler’ pages, you don’t get the obnoxious asides of Steve telling you how smart or dumb you may or may not be while reading.  This is preferred, because then you can enjoy the story which, though highly compressed, is perfectly balanced across the three issues, giving us satisfactory drama and action at healthy intervals.

And sure, the first thing YOU think when you hear the name Elshana is that you’d abbreviate it as ‘Shana,’ yes?  Me too.  Totally obvious.

So Jova is a more professional outing by Mr. Uy on every level – the art, the dialogue, the lettering, the coloring – but some built-in limitations distill its overall effect.  I do wish we had more solo Steve stuff to reflect upon, but the pompous opinions do stem from a self-perfectionist mentality that’s served his series well, so I can appreciate only wanting to put out finished projects and not just slogging to the end of his many unfinished projects just ’cause.