3 out of 5

I approached ‘Midas Flesh’ with trepidation.  I loved Dinosaur Comics, and was super happy when Ryan branched out into print with Adventure Time… a comic series which actually got me into the cartoon.  I then picked up his digital Back to the Future book, and though I found it quite hilarious, I started to find his humor – while always creative, mind you – predictable in that his setups and beats were very, very repetitive.  What Ryan calls his ‘idiosyncratic’ use of language (in the letters pages of ‘Midas’) is almost a fall-back; when in doubt, use internet speak to shape a questionable thought or sentence into a gag.  But he seemed to keep it fairly roped in on this book.  Yes, Fatty, short for Fatima – one member of a three-person crew (also including Cooper, dinosaur scientist and Joey, pilot) who have secreted away from the do-as-we-say ruling body The Federation to explore a planet that’s been wiped from the history books as its rumored to contain The Ultimate Weapon – fulfills Ryan’s need to do ALL CAPS FUNNY and punctuation-less statements, but otherwise his sci-fi plot is appreciably straight-forward (almost dark at points) and the remaining cast play mostly straight men.  So my trepidation was slowly massaged out.  I would even say I was hooked as the book passed the midway point.  The Ultimate Weapon is King Midas, who, on an Earth-like planet made a wish to turn everything to gold… and then it happened.  I’m always a sucker for “here’s an impossible idea and now we’ll apply logic to it,” and that was exactly Ryan’s approach.  What’s the logic for the transmutation?  How would one weaponize it?  The presentation of this was pretty successful without falling back on talking heads.  People would ask some what / how questions in the back pages and Ryan would answer, which gave the book further credibility and suggested that Ryan had approached this as a seasoned sci-fi or fantasy author would: show, don’t tell.  Know how your world works and write accordingly, but you don’t have to explain it all.  Grant Morrison is the extreme version of this, where he hardly tells anything, but I fully believe he’s got his interconnected craziness all mapped out.  Anyhow, the kids retrieve the weapon and then The Feds are on their trail; North continually keeps ramping up the stakes from book to book.  While the dialogue starts to slip into more recognizable North territory (as things get more frenzied, the sense that characters have an ‘individual voice’ dissipates), the setup was still intriguing.  Now I wasn’t reading with trepidation, it was more a question of whether or not I’d want to hold on to the book.

Which, thankfully, was resolved with the last two issues.  I won’t be holding on to the book.  Basically, that surprising polish and restraint to the book’s logical approach was tossed out the window: issue 8 is all explanation, and one that’s a complete loogie on the attempt to legitimize what came before, while at the same time, hoping to wrap back around and be smart with science.  Yes, I understand that we started with a fantastic idea (a wish), but it doesn’t then get a pass to use it again.

So in that sense, ‘The Midas Flesh’ is consistent with the work of a lot of creative writers: a great idea that’s presented with surprising momentum that inevitably collapses on itself.  Because Ryan has such a noticeable narrative style, the collapse is a one-two punch as he first falls back on his humor and then lets the plot crumble, and this was enough to bring the rating down to average and move the book into a non-keeper pile.  However, ‘Flesh’ was also progress.  The first two-thirds are interesting and the humor is balanced enough.  I can see North as continuing on this path until he has a much stronger writing voice that doesn’t have to rely on his random / meme-ish Adventure Time humor.  And I’m sure I’ll be checking out whichever book or series in which he makes it to that turning point.