Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comics plus a magazine:

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

”Reset” Issues 1-4 (of 4) by Petter Bagge

“Reset” is the latest story by Peter Bagge and is published by Dark Horse Comics. It’s four black and white issues and is sure to be collected into a trade paperback sometime soon. But I’m tired of TPBs so I bought the issues as they came out. Here we go.

“Reset” is a bit of an odd story and I never quite saw the point of it. Since it’s by Bagge it’s, of course, well done but at the end of it I wasn’t sure what kind of ride I had just been on. On the last few pages it turned into a tale of a man who had managed to reset his life but the rest of it didn’t seem to be about that.

“Reset” stars a man named Guy who is an actor. He once had a pretty good role on a sitcom but that was a while ago and since then his career has gone into the tank. Like a lot of Bagge’s characters Guy is cranky, self absorbed, and not always likable. He winds up being recruited for an experiment in virtual reality where a couple of lab-types strap him into a machine to relive different parts of his life.

Of course nothing with the experiment goes right and most of the plot is focused on the conflict between Guy and the two lab-types who are conducting the experiment. There is also conflict between the person conducting the experiment and her secret government bosses who are behind the scenes. But these secret bosses aren’t Illuminati types but more like bureaucrats who really aren’t very good at their jobs just like everyone else in this book.

Like all Peter Bagge comics this one is well crafted and filled with odd situations and happenings. But unlike other Peter Bagge comics this one didn’t seem to really have a focus. I liked it well enough but I’m not sure why this story exists. It had a very human ending with Guy finding a little bit of peace and love in the final pages but the rest of it didn’t seem to be concerned with Guy finding such things. Overall this one made me go “Hmmm…” more that most of Bagge’s comics but I still enjoyed it. Check it out if you’re interested. His stuff is always worth reading.