The second issue of Lost Falls is out this week from ComiXology and it continues the story of an FBI agent in a small mysterious town trying to solve a murder. Lost Falls #1 was a seductive, paranoid sci-fi mystery that balanced the weird, supernatural, and procedural police drama well. In the second issue, evil continues to reign, and bad cops slow down our main character, Daniel Pynchon.
The second issue opens with Pynchon in the same car, outside the same house ready to knock skulls with some hillbilly-looking kidnappers. He gets a little further this time, although things don’t go quite so well this time either. It’s a scene that was played like a fever dream in the last issue and it’s strong enough to warrant a reread of the first issue to soak it in. Something is afoot here, and like any good drama steeped in violence — think Blood Simple — this opening scene sells the book well.
There continue to be oddities and supernatural occurrences that will feed genre fans, but the meat of this book is focused on Pynchon in an interrogation room and what happens there. One can see occult and inverted detective storytelling going on that works rather well here.
Writer Curt Pires draws you into Pynchon, who we quite honestly barely know up until this point. He’s no-nonsense, clearly committed to his mission at hand, and is dealing with police that isn’t necessarily running things too well in town.
Props must go out to letterer Micah Meyers, who does a fantastic job with this interrogation scene. The lettering has a sharper edge to it that adds seriousness to everything said. Much like the art and colors, there’s a subtle nature to the lettering that draws you in.
He might need to back out of this fight before it gets worse for him.
Credit: ComiXology
This issue splits up art between Antonio Fuso for the first two pages and Pierluigi Minotti for the remaining 24. The split is due to Fuso’s two pages being reused from the first issue. That’s key to the scene we’re getting to see a scene play out further along. Minotti does well to extend this scene — it’s a touch simplistic, but that’s part of the charm of this book. It’s never trying to go hyperrealistic, but instead, hammer home a certain atmosphere and mood. It captures that downtrodden and haunting look well throughout.
A lot of this book is more about blocking out a scene and showing characters sitting and talking. It captures the slower pace and doom that seems to hang over Pynchon and the town well. The final three pages are show-stoppers, revealing something truly frightening in a big way for the cliffhanger, but the scene leading up to it might send chills down your spine.
This is all colored by Lee Loughridge, who lets the shadows do a lot of the storytelling with very little brightness in much of the book. Things brighten up quite a bit when a gunshot is shown early on, as well as in the final moments.
And how about that cover by Chris Shehan? It’s evocative, beautiful in how it has rendered nature, but also unnerving. It embodies the book very well.
Lost Falls has mixed different supernatural themes into a compelling occult detective story very well. There’s a subtlety at work here that’s familiar, but sustains your interest and feels new at the same time. This second issue is a bit slower with fewer splashy moments than the first issue, but knows how to pack a punch when needed. This is the kind of moody comics we wished we had in the ’90s after watching Silence of the Lambs.
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