The latest issue of Moon Man really digs into the series’ backstory, finally showing us the ill-fated mission that resulted in seven minutes being expunged from the flight’s official records and our hero of the story being imbued with superpowers. Beyond that, the book zooms out to show us several vignettes from Ramon’s life, giving us a few more pieces of the puzzle that make up who he is. We’ve known from the jump that Ramon has always felt alienated, even before he could do things no normal human could pull off. This issue shows us his family’s money struggles, the slow and agonizing loss of his mother, and how his feelings of disenfranchisement both gave him a chip on his shoulder and seemingly encouraged him even more to be kind to people as he navigated it all. Ramon is shown to us as a guy who has always felt like he has something to prove, but it doesn’t seem like he ever let that feeling poison his spirit, and that makes him a truly worthy and compelling protagonist.
Guest artist Federico Bertoni gives this one everything he’s got, particularly in the second half as everything goes topsy-turvy with the mission. The page layouts are turned on their side, which has the effect of making us feel out-of-sorts along with the characters, as well as nicely simulates the zero-gravity journey from one end of the capsule to the other. The final pages, where each spot in the timeline converges, are beautifully done, feeling at once disorienting and exciting. Character acting throughout is strong, and you can see noticeable shifts in the way Ramon carries himself at different stages of his life. The more psychedelic moments of the issue recall Bertini’s exquisite work on Monomyth, and my hope is that we’ll be seeing a lot more of his work in comic shops this year.
Image Comics
The constant hopping around in time may be a bit disorienting for some readers at first glance, however, particularly as some sequences barely last beyond a page. There are also some moments of dialogue that don’t seem to totally tie together, giving the feeling that Ramon has always been a little bit out-of-step with the rest of reality. I feel like these stylistic choices pay off pretty handsomely in the issue’s finale and offer up some interesting implications for future issues. (It also made me want to re-read previous issues to see if there are bits of dialogue from the narrative’s future or past, but I have not yet taken a closer look). I’d love to know how writers Scott Mescudi, Kyle Higgins, and Joe Clark laid it all out before scripting. Were there cork boards? I’ll bet there were cork boards.
Despite the ambitious time-jumping presentation, there are a few elements of this issue that suggest perhaps the story has been compressed in some ways. We get to see some of Ramon’s first interactions with the crew of his ill-fated space mission, and while it’s great to fill in some gaps regarding how they feel about one another, it does feel like some of these relationships change on a dime.
This is particularly true of Ramon’s combative partnership with Buckley, the nepo-baby in charge of the mission. We’ve known for a while that Ramon has some beef with this guy, but this issue really shows us how impossible he was to work with. At the same time, it also gives us a few nice moments of human interaction between the two, showing us that there may at one time have been a heart and soul underneath Buckley’s showboating rich boy routine. It’s a nice bit of character background, but it’s undone pretty quickly when Buckley immediately makes a heel turn the second his 15 minutes of intergalactic fame seem to be threatened. This quick turn could be intended to show us that Buckley contains multitudes, but it causes a tiny bit of whiplash in execution.
Still, that’s a small nitpick, and something that could easily be addressed in future issues. Even with some of the character motivations still being somewhat unclear, the answers and backstory provided by Moon Man‘s sixth issue are both welcome and tantalizing. I’m excited to see how the second part of this arc builds on this issue.
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