The Squidder numero dos. Strap the fudge in. …Hmm. Not swearing feels wrong. Also, “strap the fudge in,” sounds like some kinky kind of candy sex.
…
Right, The Squidder #2 by Ben Templesmith, is it good?
The Squidder #2 (IDW Publishing)
This issue slows down a bit. It’s one of those necessary explanatory issues. There are some sweet action sequences, and a really cool scene with a big squid baddie, but most of the issue is exposition. Make no mistake, though, Templesmith needed to explain some of the s--t going down in this book. Enough is brought into the light of this dying world for us to piece some things together, for instance what exactly a Squidder is. And what a priestess for the Squids is, and what they do. Nevertheless, it felt like a major information dump, and was bogged down quickly by explanations. It seems like a dense mythology, so it’s probably necessary. Hard to say not having read the whole series yet.
There are a few really striking panels, but most of the art seems to merely be a means to an end for delivering dialogue. As always, the backgrounds are lush, and I’m a big fan of the pencil-thin onomatopoeia above that looks like it was written in by hand. It’s just a bummer when such cool art is covered with so many words!
Is It Good?
It’s intriguing, as this universe is bad-ass, but it suffers from what a lot of second issues suffer from: the dreaded bog down. It’s rad to hear about the history of this new world overrun by evil squid demons, but it comes off as overly-wordy and crammed in. That said, it’s still a dude genetically modified to fight giant-ass squid aliens, so even when it does take a detour to exposition land, it’s still fun.
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