Jadas went a bit further than perhaps he was supposed to last issue in an effort to discover where he came from and what his purpose in life is. Will he find the answers he’s looking for, or more then he bargained for? Is it good?
BOY-1 #2 (IDW Publishing)
This issue opens with an unexpected shot in western Nigeria, where for whatever reason biohazardous material is being parachuted in. We don’t get much of an explanation as to what’s going on there just yet, but it is mentioned later, so it should be interesting to see where that goes. As far as Jadas goes, after a serene anesthesic dream is cut short, Jadas breaks out of the lab and eventually gets taken to see Dr. Martinez, police department psychologist for evaluation/possible connection to the break in at the lab.
His mom picks him up, and takes a one way trip to Exposition City. Settle in for about four pages of background, which is nice to a point, but a lot of what it’s telling us were inferred from the last issue, so it really serves mainly as confirmation. We’re told once again that Jadas is incredibly bright but has a drug and alcohol problem, which might actually be by design. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot here, so take a read for yourself.
After absolutely loving issue #1, I’m a little underwhelmed by #2. The main plot is still interesting, of course—finding out where Jadas is from and what his purpose is is good fun, but not a lot is divulged here that wasn’t either alluded to or outright explained last issue. And this is a miniseries that is going to go for four issues, so if a quarter of those issues don’t really progress the story too terribly much, that isn’t a great thing.
That is, of course besides the aforementioned Nigerian biohazard, which was played up by Jadas’ mom after hearing about it on the news as some sort of supervirus that’s more potent and dangerous than Ebola. We aren’t told much else about the problem, but rest assured Jadas’s company has something to do with it.
The artwork continues to look nice, even though there is basically no action in this comic outside of a couple scenes where Jadas breaks free of his captors. The layouts are nice, though, and the art continues to have no issue whatsoever conveying what’s going on in the story.
Is It Good?
BOY-1 has an interesting premise, but issue #2 fails to live up to the excitement of the first. This is a common thread in comics, but in a miniseries slated to only be four issues long, I was hoping for a lot more story and action than what we ended up with here. Still though, the overarching story is oslid and we’re thrown a new development to chew on, so I’m still eagerly awaiting issue #3.
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