4 out of 5

Though the youth-geared GN is pretty enormous, I can only think of a few creators – like, count on one hand – who are able to do richer, deep dive narratives that effectively play all ages, reward rereads, and that take advantage of the comic book medium. The ones that come to mind generally have a traceable comic book history; Royden Lepp – writer and artist of Rust – has, as far as I’ve been able to find, a singular three issue comic to his name (a 2005 book for Alias), before his resume starts showing off a much longer history in entertainment and animation; Rust, as of this writing, is really his only other comic book creation.

But we can note a few things about it, woven with this background: Rust’s impressive, 200-ish page four volumes (plus a 0 issue about half that size) released over the course of six years, ranging in 1 to 4 years between books; secondly, that Lepp’s work in animation supported his storytelling positively, as opposed to patching one format’s tics atop the base of the other. So the book is a passion project, one Lepp committed to long-term while keeping other aspects of his career active, and one that truly benefitted from that varied career. While volume 2 may not be as careful with its lore drips as volume 1, and thus offer the same sense of mystery – it lays out some of its bigger narrative beats pretty clearly, and tells a straight-forward story – Lepp’s very cinematic use of framing and pacing nails characterization and atmosphere like almost no other, though certainly in a manner truly unique to Lepp. It makes for such an engaging read, and kind of truly “all ages” in the widest sense: this feels like a book that could play to types who may have trouble reading / committing to comic books.

Once again housed in an easily-openable, cloth-coated hardback – a sky blue swapped for the earthy brown of the preceding volume – Secrets of the Cell divulges exactly that, or at least as much as I think we need to know: what the cell is that “powers” Jet; some understanding of why he needs to continue to swap them out. Lepp avoids the epistolary framing of Book 1, though does kick off with another flashback, more explicitly showing Jet’s part in the war, and introducing an overseer of sorts for the cell-fueled soldiers. In the modern day, Roman finishes his work on one of the robots intended for farm help (with Jesse’s assistance), while Oswald spots Jet up to weird business, and decides to find out some more info. Things essentially go awry on all fronts, leading to an unexpected – and damn tense – scuffle.

Apply my praises of Repp’s visual storytelling throughout. Many artists attempt repeated panels with slight changes to show “acting;” Lepp succeeds: shifts in brows; body language; eye contact; they tell so much in just a couple panels, and Royden knows how to spread out such methods so the book keeps moving. As a result, though, this does compress room for dialogue storytelling, requiring a couple of scenes to feel “edited” so that we get the gist without necessarily hearing all the words. It’s a fair tradeoff, but there are a couple of beats where it feels like one or two more lines could’ve naturalized a conversation even further. And though every character here has their own personality, silhouettes and general character construction seem to be “adult” and “kid,” with longer or shorter hair. The cast is small, so it’s not a problem, but when Jet and Oswald are together often, this limitation starts to show.

Overall, though, the amazing promise of the first volume is not at all distilled by giving us more information in this second, equally compelling volume.