Negative Space 1

When one man’s writer’s block gets in the way of his suicide note, he goes for a walk to clear his head and soon uncovers a century-old conspiracy dedicated to creating and mining the worst lows of human desperation.

Negative Space is a mashup of science fiction tropes that can most closely be described as The Truman show meets the Matrix.  The main character, Guy, is trying to kill himself, but he can’t decide how to word his suicide note.  He goes for a walk for inspiration, meeting a variety of people he knows, pan out the a super secret control room where technicians are waiting for the opportunity to record his suicide, and feed the sorrow and desperation to an alien race known as the Evorah.  Through a series of events, Guy eventually stumbles onto the operation, which of course makes sense because they’ve only been doing this for a few hundred years and are likely to make mistakes from time to time.  The first issue concludes with Guy discovering one of the Evorah, which we are led to believe from dialogue in the control will bring Hell on earth.

The highlight of this book is probably the art.  Many fine details in very little space.  I did like the intricacy that seemed to go into each panel.  One let down was that the main character just didn’t look that good in most of the sections.  The artist was going for a frumpy, down on his luck guy.  The effect is that Guy looks a little blobby, with a huge nose and facial features are difficult to decipher making panels hard to read.  Despite this the background in most of the issue makes up for it.   The writing however, leaves much to be desired.  The story behind Negative Space is a bit on the fun side, but stops before reaching satirical proportions, which suggests the reader is to take it as a dramatic science fiction tale.  The problem is that there are just too many plot holes to make it legible.

The coloring is really what gives this story any punch, they capture a nice Blade Runner kind of feel with Guy’s world that keeps the narrative moving forward, albeit at a sluggish pace.  Book one of this series is off to slow start, but with the promise of revelations about the Evorah and how all this will impact Guy’s bid for a well written suicide note.

For more information about Negative Space or other great works from Dark Horse, check out their site: Dark Horse

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.