Comic Reviews: The Lab GN (IDW Publishing)

IDW Publishing releases a series of stick figures which are currently are holding in some special prison which is The Lab on its first volume of the graphic novel.

Ok, I dunno if I’m seeing this, but I’m reviewing a comic about stick figures, trapped in a laboratory that almost looks like Arkham Asylum. And most likely this is the colored stick figure version of it which almost makes everything turned into candy or something, but to be honest this whole comic almost looked like the episode of Rick and Morty when Rick made out with a planet and then the planet exploded their offsprings right out of a volcano. The story is written and illustrated by Allison Conway, and this graphic novel was meant to her parents and her art teacher to finish making this comic. Perhaps, it’s not obligatory to tell her to finish her comic, it’s her nature to draw and to draw what he or she truly loves, that is the code for all the artists out there.

The front cover shows a stick figure character of a design that is taking him from his own will by a metal claw and takes him in some torture room or something to experiment. And all those colors that the lab is producing is like giving these creatures some drugs to have some different colors to paint something. That is almost like choosing your best color from the color wheel whenever you study color theory and something happens if you mix two colors of paint. The Lab almost seems like a research facility, but for this character, he doesn’t seem very happy about it. From the start of the story, this comic has no dialogues, even if you make that up, this would seem to be more of an indie comic than a graphic novel.

The story starts on the first few pages when the main character wakes up in some strange place which looks like a prison. He sees a toilet bowl overflown with water, leftovers becoming rotten, and some water on a dog’s bowl. And whenever he looked outside of the window, he sees a strange place with boxes and tubes like a factory, and then he gets taken in a laboratory to experiment with him. It’s more of a torture device to have him so much pain in his eye, and it seems that his eye is infected. And the whole thing occurs in his everyday life, trapped in a prison. It’s a theory, but this is exactly what life in prison is like for humans who are corrupted and evil. It injected every vaccine for him to not giving a disease, but the weird thing is that the injection that he was taking, the laboratory is collecting blood colors to have some kind of a palette. I’m guessing that the author did a great job of studying color theory because the way what the story describes is meant to have a practice in Fine Art, it’s stunning and terrifying at the same time. Anyway, the story comes with a plot twist when the main character met its own kind in a capsule. I do wonder what those experiments are for? Is it a cure for a disease, or just some study to invent color? At the end of the story, the main character was thrown off the laboratory and set himself free from that prison and he started wandering around in tall grass to look for some hope, as the whole environment in which he is imprisoned is like a city colored with some Crayola crayons. And not to mention these tubes of color is where it came from the other experiments from the start of the story, and it’s not him alone, everyone was freed too.

The story seems to have a sad situation to have the main character treated as a guinea pig. It makes no difference that the lab is experimenting with those creatures for color. I wouldn’t have guessed from the start of the story because the main character was being tortured and left him in pain until the day after tomorrow. The character designs are just only stick figures which the artist gave him a body, a big head with eyes, and a free will, which is almost like the designs of the elemental Ignis from Yu-Gi-Oh! Vrains. But seriously, what are they being tested for? There’s no way that this comic was created to make those stick figures alive to do a lab testing. Anyway, The Lab is a fascinating comic and very terrifying to know the consequences between the stick figures to realize their purpose.