Posted in: Comics, IDW, Review | Tagged: idw publishing, kirby veitch, rick veitch, sci-fi, superheroes, The One

Rick Veitch's The One #2 Review: A Lesser Followup, but the Story Still Offers a Lot

Egypt wakes up to a mysterious and strange man named the One in his bed. Her son, Larry, is instinctively attracted to The One. The apartment celebrates their survival when Jay-Hole returns. He's been shot, killed a cop, and stole a lot of money. The One talks to him, and Jay-Hole is possessed by a being calling itself the Other. This Other is far more malicious.

Meanwhile, the superhuman programs of the US and the USSR begin in earnest, and each has some troubling problems.

The second installment of Rich Veitch's The One focuses on the aftermath of the Big Sleep and the coming of the superhumans. We are briefly introduced to The One as well as the superhumans created by the US and the USSR.

Less focus is given to the world, so we have more time with the characters. While the characters are decently engaging, not much in the way of plot development happens in this issue. A lot is established, particularly the origins of the superhumans belonging to the two governments, but that's backstory and not forward progress. What doesn't help is that the backstories waver between intentionally vague and overexplained.

Speaking of overexplained, a lot of this comic is made up of text walls, and it really hurts the pacing.

I also don't know what to make of the comic strip that follows up the book. It's — interesting, but I'm not going to touch that.

Like the first issue, Veitch's art style is cartoonish and malformed, which fits the cruel, vile, and unnerving world in which our characters exist. The design of the superhumans have a distinct appearance to them. The One himself is bizarre and otherworldly, but the superhumans from America and Russia are so muscular that it's off-putting. Kirby Veitch's color work is over-contrasted to make it look almost sickly, which is also very fitting for this world

The One #2 is less engaging than the first, but the characters and the world are still interesting and have a lot of potential to go places both fascinating and unnerving. I can recommend this one if you've read the first, but I wouldn't hop on here.

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