The Squidder numero dos. Strap the fudge in. …Hmm. Not swearing feels wrong. Also, “strap the fudge in,” sounds like some kinky kind of candy sex.
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Right, The Squidder #2 by Ben Templesmith, is it good?
The Squidder #2 (IDW Publishing)
This issue slows down a bit. It’s one of those necessary explanatory issues. There are some sweet action sequences, and a really cool scene with a big squid baddie, but most of the issue is exposition. Make no mistake, though, Templesmith needed to explain some of the shit going down in this book. Enough is brought into the light of this dying world for us to piece some things together, for instance what exactly a Squidder is. And what a priestess for the Squids is, and what they do. Nevertheless, it felt like a major information dump, and was bogged down quickly by explanations. It seems like a dense mythology, so it’s probably necessary. Hard to say not having read the whole series yet.
There are a few really striking panels, but most of the art seems to merely be a means to an end for delivering dialogue. As always, the backgrounds are lush, and I’m a big fan of the pencil-thin onomatopoeia above that looks like it was written in by hand. It’s just a bummer when such cool art is covered with so many words!
Is It Good?
It’s intriguing, as this universe is bad-ass, but it suffers from what a lot of second issues suffer from: the dreaded bog down. It’s rad to hear about the history of this new world overrun by evil squid demons, but it comes off as overly-wordy and crammed in. That said, it’s still a dude genetically modified to fight giant-ass squid aliens, so even when it does take a detour to exposition land, it’s still fun.
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