As Danny’s reality begins to take a turn for the worse as his mother’s health is on the decline, so does his imagination as it becomes more active and prominent. Danny’s imagination is starting to crossover into his reality.
On the surface, the book is about the power of imagination, and its ability to either destroy or save the minds of people through creativity in times of desperation. Despite that, at its core, it’s about Danny struggling to come to grips with his mother’s deteriorating health and his coping through imagination and fiction that helps him reflect and work through such a difficult time. Szymon Kudranski does a wonderful job at exploring these ideas of imagination and the dangers and benefits of finding solace in it. Kudranski is fantastic at writing dialogue, and narration, be it Danny narrating, or conversations with his aunt, or interactions with all of the heroes, villains, and creatures that are archetypes of various mediums of comics, video games, film, and literature. While this book is focused on Danny’s story, Kudranski does a great job at making it a book that is subtly for readers and most effectively and therapeutically for artists and creators, which makes Danny’s story more compelling than it already is.
While Kudranski is displaying his writing chops effectively, he’s going above and beyond with his various styles as an illustrator, displaying different kinds of art styles when drawing various characters of Danny’s active imagination, while maintaining Danny’s reality which is distinctively gray. This feels akin to what’s done in the Spider-Verse films where characters have distinctive art styles that really set them apart. While stuff like that has been explored in books like Cates series, Crossover, Kudranski takes that a step further, making every style that he illustrates distinct to the genre and medium that each imaginative character harkens to. DC Hopkins does a fantastic job in the lettering department with his choice of font and word bubbles. He’s able to make cool sounds that fit characters of various genres of comics such as American superheroes, cartoons, and shonen manga, making for a unique accompaniment to Kudranski’s art. This is another stellar issue, and if you’re looking for something akin to Vertigo/ Neil Gaiman, then this book is worth adding to your pull list for comic book day.
Newsdesk