And Then I Read: KIRBY GENESIS 5 & 6

Images © Roslyn Kirby Family Trust.

I wanted to like this book. I like the idea of it: Kirby’s many later and/or unused concepts appearing in a new series owned by the family. Unfortunately the execution doesn’t work for me, and these will be the last issues I’ll be reading. The script by Kurt Busiek makes a valiant attempt to tie things together, especially in issue 6, but there are just too many characters, too many storylines, too many different teams and objectives and struggles and cataclysmic events. When everything is super and cataclysmic, nothing really has much impact, it all kind of runs together for me. The male and female regular folks that began as the viewpoint characters at the outset of the series are still here somewhere, but again largely lost in the shuffle. Despite the long roster of characters already in play, new ones are still being introduced in issue 6:

The art by Jack Herbert and Alex Ross is colorful, well-crafted and full of energy, but often too crowded with figures and actions. The frequent lack of real panel borders and often diagonal panel dividing lines does not help the reading experience, either, it’s hard to find the correct reading order in many places.

Hope there’s an audience out there that’s loving this book, I’m not it.