Review: The Lab

The stark thing that you’ll notice about Allison Conway“s The Lab is its lack of urgency to spoon feed the narrative to the reader, Instead preferring to let the reader be a voyeur into the pain that the subject is going through.

Another thing that the reader might notice is that it is never made quite clear where The Lab happens, or what it is or what its actual purpose is. Â You do not know whether it is happening in an actual laboratory or in a prison or in a hospital treatment center.

As a result, the ambiguous location sheds an obscure light on the subject. Â It is not made clear as to who or what the protagonist is. Though it has a humanoid form, meaning it has two arms and two legs, it is missing other distinguishable characteristics such as nose, ears, hair, and at times it’s missing a mouth. Also missing is means to distinguish its sex as either male or female. It’s not even clear on whether the protagonist is really a good guy or a bad guy.

What is clear is that with the lack of information, the reader is forced project their feelings onto what they see happening in the panels. So, for instance we often see the subject being either experimented on or being treated for something. I for instance on the first reading read it one way but on the second and third was able to extract other meanings. The reader is never sure.Â but we do feel something for that character almost immediately because we could only imagine the pain or the torture that the subject is going through.

The only thing I am fairly sure of is the subject’s ability to feel pain and that is by the tears that are shed at their a few of the experiments.Â And the only reason why I feel solid enough to confirm that is because there is a couple panels where there are other subjectsÂ who have expressed their pain in the same way.

What is also clear in Allison Calloway’s The Lab is the importance of the symbolism of the colors. Here the color is more than what you just see. The colors are part of the narrative in the story. In The Lab there are different colors at the main narrative elements black white red green blue and yellow. Wheres in other stories colors represent different Characters that are in a world situations, it is hard to tell if this is the same instance in this story.

The Lab is for those people who like to dig into every single panel and find new details that changes the narrative ever so slightly. On first reading a story about isolation and desperation later turns into something else by the 2nd and 3rd reading.Â There’s only a couple of things that might be holding The Lab back: Number one the price. At a price of 19.99 for 180 pages may or may not be that bad depending on your situation. The reason why I hesitate to recommend it at this price point Â is because I haven’t heard any news on whether this is going to be a property that’s going to go forward or whether this is just a one shot. It was such an entertaining read that I hope there is more to come from Alison Conway“s creation The Lab.

SCORE: 4 out 5 stars

(W) Allison Conway
(A) Allison Conway
(C) Allison Conway

Published by IDW publishing with Top Shelf productions