Plastic: Death & Dolls #5 // Review
The phone is ringing. Edwin is going to answer it. It’s an old landline phone, but Edwin doesn’t need to see caller ID to know who it is on the other end of the line. He’s angry and there’s a lot that he’s going to have to confront in the final showdown between killers. Writer Doug Wagner concludes Plastic: Death & Dolls with artist Daniel Hillyard and colorist Michelle Madsen. The weird mix of somewhat disjointed horror scenes reaches its big conclusion in a steady flow of blood, passion and anger that shoots itself across the page on its way to the back cover.
Edwin goes out to ask the FBI field agents to keep an eye on him as he’s clearly entering a kind of danger that he doesn’t entirely understand. He knows that they don’t look good, but he doesn’t seem to notice that they aren’t exactly alive. That’s just Edwin, though. He’s weird like that. He’s kind of oblivious to some things. That’s okay, though: his heart is in the right place: straight through his chest. It’s pumping all of his blood. Some of that blood might just come out of him as he tracks-down the man who has kidnapped Booker.
Wagner moves the story along quite steadily, even though the scenes seem to be hitting the page at Ingles. Is kind of fun to watch it ricochet across the page. All of the blood and drama and uncertainty of it all. There's a lot of symbolism that Wagner is pouring across the page. It seems to collect and various places in various ways that almost sort of seem to make a kind of sense. However, this IS the story of killer on the trailer of another. There's a lot of moral ambiguity and it can feel pretty bleak. There isn't much beyond the bleakness, though. A broken man is engaging in a conflict with another broken man. And there's a lot of human life that seems to be circulating around the both of them.
As it is, Hillyard does this solidly good job of bringing it to page and panel with heart and empathy. There's real intensity in the faces of everyone concerned. The emotional weight of what is being brought to the page is given quite a bit of substance with skewed, angles, and clean lines.Madsen follows Hillyard’s lead with simple, clean colors that render quite a bit of depth and shadow to the darkness that seems to encompass everything. Striking visuals anchor the intensity of the series’ final chapter.
If Edwin is given enough time on the page in subsequent series, the Full picture of the character could release our resonate as it is right now, the current series doesn't have quite enough impact to draw a profound understanding of who he is. There's a little bit more that's revealed. There's a little bit more that comes across the page. But it still feels like fragmented that would really need a lot more support in order to feel complete.
