Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Image, Review | Tagged: emma kubert, false, image, image comics, Inkblot, rusty gladd

Inkblot #2 Review: More Cat Would Go A Long Way

Inkblot #2 sees penciller/colorist Emma Kubert and inker/writer Rusty Gladd remove their lead character, the eponymous cat Inkblot, from the storyline introduced in the first issue, sending it off for an adventure with elves and a dragon. How does this adventure turn out for the lovable cat?

The more Inkblot focuses on the cat, the stronger the series is. This issue sees the cat leave the lead character of the first issue and find itself instead amongst a clan of elves on the day that they set out to fight a powerful dragon. The story falters when it focuses on the family dynamic of the elves with sloppy character development that introduces but never pays off a conflict between a warrior mother and her daughter, brought together by the shared loss of their missing matriarch and separated by one's bravery and the other's fear. This series is very, very art-focused, with the story coming as an afterthought, which works beautifully for the scenes where the adorably designed cat pulls the narrative ahead and, unfortunately, doesn't work at all when the story focuses on the non-feline characters.

Inkblot #1 was a nice and warm helping of comfort-food fantasy, but this second issue aims to deepen the story and the world with less exciting results. In future issues, Inkblot would be highly enjoyable if it spent less time trying to build the politics of this fantasy world, focusing less on the humanoid characters and their struggles and more on the adventures of the cat, which each issue has ended up focusing on anyway. Instead of introducing characters with complex histories and then doing nothing with them when the series shifts focus to the furry star, it would be better to see the comic more from the cat's POV as opposed to it being an odd mixture of a catalyst for other people's adventures and a deus ex machina when the characters end up being unable to fend for themselves, both in their situation and narratively.

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