4 out of 5

It looks amazing, the initial world-building is jaw-droppingly realized and awesome, the paneling is fluid, the dialogue is natural, and the story just irks and quirks in really interesting ways.  …Until about the mid-point, when some question marks arrive, and then trouble with pacing the action, and then some “is that it?” story elements that don’t quite match up to the potential of the pitch… but its Jason Brubaker’s first comic, and the little extra in the back that tells of reMIND’s creation, while a little self-serving (but he undoubtedly did do tons of work to get here, work which I haven’t done, so we can allow that, yes?), makes it clear that while there might be some rough patches in what’s still, essentially, a developing concept, years of heart and soul are bound in the book, and that can be felt on every page.

So we have Sonja, who does mechanical things in a lighthouse on a somewhat cyber-punky island, missing her dad, who believed in some local folklore about frogmen.  We have her cat, Victuals, who chases a rat into the surrounding waters and never comes back.  …Until he does, with stitches on his head, and he’s able to talk.  Though he doesn’t seem to remember much about his life on the island.

It’s hardbound, with a clean, cartoony style and gorgeous Spring color palette that’s balanced with liberal positive and negative space and a scratchy inking style to make that static panels so lively that when movement does occur, it’s three-dimensional, leaping off the page.

But when the story, told in a few parts, starts to fill in the background for Victuals, it gets a little dodgy.  The amount of time passing between events becomes difficult to grasp, as we lurch back and forth between things that must’ve occurred over a stretch of years, and then maybe months, and then maybe days, but they’re all treated with the same relevance.  And as happens too often with interesting ideas, the cool story seeds start to grow into fairly predictable concepts.  How many volumes will reMIND be?  Who knows.  Volume 2 is coming out, and so after a nice and slow buildup to Victuals’ pursuing the how and why of his ‘transformation,’ the story seems to start and stop to get to an appropriate stopping point, and some scuffles that happen along the way show the limits of Brubaker’s vision, his work in animation perhaps negatively influencing his awareness of space on the page for properly communicating the dance moves in a battle.

Whatever though.  My feelings toward the story are honestly overwhelmed by how much I enjoyed reading the book, and not just because it looks pretty (though of course that’s part of it), but because of that heart and soul I mention.  It’s very rich, even though it moves quickly, with the same kind of hidden depth of world and character that Jeff Smith’s Bone had, probably because Brubaker sat with it for so long.  I hope he continues in the field.  He’s embraced the feedback-ready world of the internet for shaping the package up to what’s presented, and this openness to evolving should help to sort out writing hiccups in future projects.  For now, though, I’m definitely looking forward to part 2, if not for the continuation of the tale than for, at least, the experience of the read.