REVIEW: 8House #3: Kiem

Written by Brandon Graham and Xurxo G. Penalta, art by Xurxo G. Penalta, published by Image Comics.

Beautifully obtuse, I thought this would better than it was. European styling and high concept sci-fi, it looks good but that’s about it.Â From what I could gather, a character called Kiem was sick, now she’s not, and she wombles through a series of events that don’t feel connected or like they have any impact on her or her on them. We get no real development or insight into Kiem and thus you don’t really give a toss about her.

The art is gorgeous but there’s a sequence several pages in where Kiem possesses her brothers dead body on another planet to have a fight with some aliens, I think. The whole scene is upside down. I’ll let that sink in. It’s REALLY hard to tell what’s going on. Before anyone thinks ‘turn it upside down’ I read it on a tablet, and I’m fucked if I know where the ‘Don’t irritate Mr Sharp by rotating all the time’ button is. The main problem is though it’s all drawn in mad Mobius looking designs, coloured in very similar hues and your brain simply doesn’t read images well upside down. It was not a well executed idea.

On the whole it’s a very confusing book, you don’t really know what’s going on, you don’t really care by the end but it’s gorgeous to look at except when it’s upside down.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]