San Francisco 1989, post-earthquake, and a woman who was abused as a kid is killing her abusers one by one. Ethan joins in ‘cos he lurves her, ooo!
Not that it really matters but this is the story that’s happening concurrently with the one in the previous book, The Ghost in You - where Anna’s doing her thang in LA and Ethan’s doing his in San Francisco. Follow Me Down is the fifth(!) Reckless book Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have done in two years and the quality is really suffering from the rapidity of the publication schedule - I’d put this book down there with Destroy All Monsters as the worst in the series.
It’s a very uninspired and slow-moving story. Ethan does his usual schtick: he’s given a mission, he interviews suspects, drives around following people, roughing some up, and so on. We’ve seen him do this so many times by now (assuming you’ve been reading all of the books in the series like I have) that it’s rote. The occasional scene is mildly interesting and Sean Phillips’ art is solid but by and large the comic was very unengaging and forgettable with an anticlimactic finale.
Ironically, early in the story, Ethan suggests a Planet of the Apes marathon for their movie theatre and Anna says that only the first one is any good - that’s how I’d describe Reckless the series too: only the first one is really worth checking out.
Brubaker mentions in his afterword that they’re taking a hiatus on Reckless to do other stuff next but that they’ll be back to continue the series again soon. Let’s hope the break leads to some better ideas because Follow Me Down clearly shows they’re running on empty.
No comments:
Post a Comment