Mazebook #2

Mazebook #2

Dark Horse Comics 2021

By Jeff Lemire

Lettered by Steve Wands

Will's a melancholy building inspector who's been grieving the loss of his puzzle-loving daughter for years. One evening he receives a mysterious phone call from a girl claiming it's her and that she's trapped in the middle of a labyrinth, setting Will off on a journey digging through her personal journals and puzzles for answers on where she is and how to bring her back home.

How is it humanly possible to be so completely and utterly mesmerisingly engaging as this is? As you go through this book and experience what this issue has to offer you begin to wonder about Will’s state of mental health. Though it isn’t really if he’s crazy or not, because honestly I don’t believe he is though it was my first thought, because the idea about whether or not he’s finally able to start the grieving process and come to grips with the fact that his daughter is dead and he has to move on. Is this maze the way he’s going to be moving on or is it part of something much larger and supernatural in nature? I am pretty much discounting a supernatural element to this story and instead I see this as an all too human sense of grief finally being able to resolve itself but at this stage it’s really too early to know positively.

I am completely and utterly enamoured with the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter manages to keep the ever growing and evolving personality come to the forefront. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story the more engaged our minds become.

I love how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen are so amazingly well rendered. How we see the layers that open up though the layers add this staggering depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is immaculately achieved.

The interiors here are so mindbogglingly brilliant. The linework is sensational and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the kind of detail we see within the work throughout the book is astounding. Aside from the mazes, of which there are so many, the way we see faces and facial expressions and how they give off such emotion and feelings is phenomenal. The way we see backgrounds being utilised to enhance and expand the moments as well as how they work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. I like that this has more of a gray or green wash effect with pops of red being utilised. It really brings this a more eerie feel to the story and then of course how we see the dream sequence colours or the those on the daughter it just makes this stellar impact upon the reader.

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I keep going through things in my mind when I am reading this book. The human mind, human nature and the fact that I may or may not have noticed a shift in Will’s personality on a job site. You can form your own opinions based on what you read but one thing that is for sure is that this is more than a story, it’s a fully immersive experience. You experience so much more than what’s presented on the page and this is something that is the one common thread we’ll all share. This is a brilliantly told story that defies explanation or classification it’s just good old fashioned superb storytelling.