The Moon Is Following Us #1 // Review
Duncan and Sam are assessing the situation. Security is tight. Thanlfully, they’ve had some help getting in by an anthropomorphized cigarette-smoking frog wearing a little golden crown who happens to be carrying a ridiculously large rifle on his back. His name is Brio. He’ll be waiting for them at the rendezvous. He won’t go where they’re going in The Moon Is Following Us #1. Writer Daniel Warren Johnson opens a new story with the aid of artist Riley Rossmo and colorist Mike Spicer. It’s a promising opening for a fantasy adventure drama that just might have a bit more emotional weight than most in the genre.
Sam fights with a curved sword. Duncan is more of a protector, so he’s got armor that’s a bit heavier. They’ve been carving their way through a very dangerous place over the course of the past six months. That’s how long their daughter has been sleeping for. They’ve been building-up forces. Making allies. Gathering weapons. Fighting tooth and nail...and all from within the dream world of a sleeping fighter who simply can’t wake-up. It’s not easy for them...but they just might risk losing their daughter if they don’t keep trying.
There’s the kernel of a sharp idea here. The dual-layered drama of a people playing a fantasy role-playing adventure game has been done before on a few different occasions to different degrees of success. The added element of danger in the wellbeing of their daughter amps-up the intensity of the drama considerably. It also has the added dynamic of exploring the inner emotional struggles of a couple of parents dealing with a child who is essentially in a coma that they could theoretically pull her out of if they can only find just the right strategy.
Rossmo’s art can sometimes get lost in a somewhat formless spaghetti of noodles. With The Moon is Following Us, his style settles-down enough to deliver a fairly coherent fantasy adventure world with some rather breathtakingly clever panels that frame the fantasy quite well. The character design also manages to deliver some compelling fantasy to the page that feels very earthy and organic. And the action is quite impressively realized as well. The contrast between the world of fantasy and the world of reality is a bit hazy. A grittier, more listlessly restless sort of a visual reality would create much more of a contrast between the fantasy adventure world and the world and the waking world.
So there’s a lack of contrast between the worlds. That’s not a HUGE problem so long as Rossmo and Johnson are able to deliver the heart of the drama to the page in a way that’s going to feel strong enough to carry narrative momentum from one issue to the next in a ten-issue mini-series. In the first issue, Johnson drops the readers right into the middle of a very tense combat sort of a situation...and it can be difficult to get a st ring connection with the characters right away, but things are bound to settle-down with the premise fully revealed by the end of the first issue.
Grade: B
