Broken Frontier

When I reviewed Scorn #1, I was taken primarily by the book’s conceptually low-key angle on an otherwise overblown genre (that of the street-side vigilante).  It held a nondescript, uncomplicated execution, though was enhanced by unexpectedly fantastical art by the stellar Philipp Neundorf, his style the broken-hearted result of a doomed romance between the dadaism of Dave McKean and the horror-laced expressionism of Bill Sienkiewicz.  What hooked me was a desire to see where Scorn eventually led to, after its beginnings, how the remaining three issues of the mini would play out, as the story, while a classic, left little in the way of obvious genre earmarks.  There was a man out for revenge, and a cast of miserable, disenfranchised characters surrounding him, but how would its odd sensibilities translate in overall plot?

Now through issue #2, and therefore halfway complete, Scorn looks to stick to its sparse text and streamlined story flow, a book told more through its art than dialogue or, bizarrely,  even plot.  Writer Kevin Moyers does something that’s either skillful or simply too hands-off, allowing Neundorf to paint the entire implementation, as though Moyers himself were a silent-film screenwriter in collaboration with a director cum cinematographer cum art designer, and therefore, what credit, precisely, can the writer be given beyond establishing the baseline concept?  The dialogue, what little is present, proves largely unnecessary, again comparable to a silent film’s, the picture of a man angry with another accompanied by such illuminating text as “Shut up!  Just shut up!”  It isn’t poor dialogue, and in fact reads natural and organic, true to the characters and what they might say in reality.  However, unnaturally, there’s just too little there, like a Reader’s Digest version of actual conversation.

What’s left then is an artist’s book, something that could have been told wordlessly a la Peter Kuper, only because the artist isn’t steering the ship, he instead following a too-sparse script, there ultimately isn’t enough going on art-wise to outright replace what’s missing on the textual side.  Although (a positive note): what is there art-wise is bloody marvelous.   Neundorf not only produces pictures on a par with any Ben Templesmith template of color and expressionistic action, but he also, into every panel, works an overlay of nearly abstract enhancement, an exoskeleton of squiggly off-color action lines and subtly woven-in miniature frames which subliminally lead the reader’s eyes from detail to detail.  It can take pages to even notice, explicitly, the sheer level of detail involved, and then the panels become momentarily overwhelming, the facets too many to consciously catalogue, but a moment further and the eye relaxes to allow Nuendorf’s art to once again work its magic the only way possible: naturally and sans all effort.

The sheer complexity of the art is astounding, though while this seems to contradict my claim of too little “going on art-wise”, the criticism lies within the actual story-related activity itself: Neundorf is a master at busying up his own lines, but the story’s events and the character actions are nonetheless simple, minimal, and overly plain.  There’s conflict and structure, but it’s more akin to arithmetic than algebra.  There are depths to every character, but the story skims only their immediate surface without plunging any deeper.

The story of Scorn, ultimately, is proving overly-familiar without providing enough in the way of detail to distinguish itself otherwise.  Its characters are knowable, though again, not individual enough to be more than types, and the execution, by this mid-point, is beginning to slide into equally familiar, predictable terrain.  On the plus side, there’s a larger supporting cast than one would expect, which gives the possibility of surprises in the final two issues,  and the art by Neundorf, in case it hasn’t been driven home yet, is outlandishly well-played and worth ogling again and again, new details and underpinnings discovered at every go-round, granting Scorn an unexpectedly high re-readability factor.

Is Scorn “worth it”?  I have my criticisms, but yes, it’s worth reading for its merits alone, worth the price, worth the commitment.  I hope for a meatier, denser offer from Septagon in the future, but for the time being, Scorn is a comic book mildly entertaining as a straightforward tale of revenge, and emphatically unforgettable as a showcase of Nuendorf’s art.  If you’re on the fence about this one, go take a sneak peek.  That’s all you’ll need to know whether or not you’ll want in on this one.