3 out of 5

Better than Cyan as none of the pieces made me hate comics and hate myself, but the color tie-in is equally weak in this book – like, I get it, it doesn’t have to be anything except for a ‘plot point,’ according to Cyan’s editorial, but it just feels all herky jerky wrong to be splitting the books up like this.  Doing it quarterly with the single colored names / covers is fine, but maybe not implying that each issue will have any type of theme; maybe only allowing the four colors in the artwork, I dunno.

On the… flip side… Rian Hughes contribution, ‘Magenta is not a color,’ is fantastic, and actually DOES deal with the color, while also spiraling around a social study and thoughts on media and hey, why not, even a small story buried in there as well.  This one story that nailed the color concept is enough.  Cyan read like piss sometimes because of how hard some people were trying to bring the color in.  Magenta’s stories mostly just fall back on using it as a repeated item of focus (a shoe in Milligan’s story; boxing gloves (I guess?  Boxing gloves are red?) in Ryan K Lindsay’s tale) and don’t bother with the silly AND THE MORAL IS PINKNESS crap.  And then Hughes, front and center.  They should’ve gotten him to do one color piece per ish, and let the rest fall by the wayside.  See – possible improvement number 2.  I am professional.

So: ‘Bone White, Blood Red’ by Rachel Deering stands on somewhat equal footing with the first story in Cyan, where it tries to pull a twist and a punchline, but at least it’s got better dialogue and a sense of internal logic.  ‘Who is Uber?’ and ‘Gem Pockets’ by Carla Berrocal and Annie Mok, respectively, fulfill our indie crap commentary quota; I don’t feel like you can rate these things, you’re either affected or, like me, you don’t care.  The rest of the book isn’t bad.  Millie’s ‘Shoe in the Attic’ is the same cause and effect tale Milligan’s be writing and rewriting with more or less sex for years, but it’s a more effective version of it than he’s scripted in quite some time, with good, cartoony art from Rufus Dayglo.  ‘Captives’ and ‘Gloves’ (Michael Moreci, Ryan K. Lindsay) don’t really do much beyond give glimpses of tales that are probably interesting, but they’re entertaining enough to read and look good.  Fabio Moon gives us another autobiographical thingy with ‘Pink Slumber.’  You liked the last one, you’ll like this one.

Besides Hughes, special mention to Jody Houser’s adrift.  This tale of two sisters coping with death is not only a wonderful example of using the comic medium (wonderfully energetic art by Nathan Fox) to tell a story in a way that could not be realized in another format, it’s also another prime example of using the color without rubbing it in our face.  The primary delivery of the dialogue is through a pink-colored toy, and one sister bears an important detail in green (which Hughes tells us is sorta the opposite of Magenta).

I’m supposing these books are already sorted, but maybe not.  Maybe Vertigo will take feedback from each issue to tweak the next.  Hopefully.  As this ish was an improvement over the last but still average over all (with only a couple real highlights), by the end of the series, we could get a great ish.