Comics I Bought This Week: November 3, 2012

Nov03
on November 3, 2012 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got five new comics:

  • The Activity – 3 (Filling in a missing issue)

  • Bedlam – 1

  • Harvest – 2 (Filling in a missing issue)

  • Fatale – 9

  • The CBDL Presents Liberty Annual 2012

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

    ”MIND MGMT” Issues 1-5 by Matt Kindt

    I think this is the first comic that I’ve read by Matt Kindt. At least I can’t recall any others and I think I’d be able to but lately I’ve been reading comics by a lot of guys who are new to me. This comic is published by Dark Horse and their “Dark Horse Originals” imprint. I think that’s their creator owned line of comics.

    ”MIND MGMT” is a simple yet sprawling story. It tells the tale of a US government agency that is made up of people with ESP powers and the people that support them. Despite the presence of super-powers it’s a pretty down to earth book. There are no fancy costumes, super-powered fights, or evil villains. The ESP powers are generally pretty subtle but do verge on the spectacular at times. Mostly the agency uses their agents to help the US get it’s way during summits and negotiations. Eventually we find out other countries have such agents too but it’s not like they battle each other.

    The story is mostly about one female agent trying to find some answers for herself about a legendary older male agent that she’s heard of. He’s hard to track down and some people might not want her to. Or do they? These are the mysteries of ”MIND MGMT”. We also get a lot of the agency’s history along the way. It’s really treated like the CIA rather than say the Illuminati. It’s pretty well grounded.

    The artwork is interesting here too. It’s a cartoony sort of indie style. It doesn’t look like a normal computer colored comic. It looks like it was done in pen and ink and then had watercolor applied right over the original black and white art. It even has all the blue line markings on each page. Usually those blue lines drop out in a black in white scan. Either these are actual watercolored pages or someone has gone to unusual lengths on the computer to make them look like watercolor.

    Overall I like this comic. The story isn’t over yet so I don’t know how it ends but so far so good. It took a little while to get going for me but by issue four things really picked up. I think Matt Kindt is going on my list of cartoonists whose work I’m going to follow. Give it a read.