Broken Frontier

Forget post-apocalypse—straight-up apocalyptic fiction is where it’s at, as the creators of Archaia Studios Press’  latest new art-spectacular series The Long Count seem to know.

Taking place during the final days of the Mayan Calendar, the story follows national sports hero Carmen Sandoval as she returns to the Barrio, to the poorest section of the capital city of “Colombiana”, the place she was raised and learned to survive in a climate of constant struggle.  Here, she’s meant to rescue a friend, herself, and the world entire from extinction.

At least, that’s what the back cover says.

If there’s a major criticism to be slung at The Long Count ’s first issue, it’s that very little happens, and the story, as a whole, isn’t clear in the least.  We follow Sandoval, running through the streets, trying to outpace someone or something, accompanied by a running narrative (pun intended) of her thoughts as we go.  Gang members confront her, but dissolve into skeletons, a freakish event that affects our hero as much as the reader (and so seems tied to the end-of-the-world scenario particular to the book, though whatever that may be isn’t yet clear).  A big-big baddie by the name of "Paqok" arrives in the second half, a supernaturally  empowered man who commands living biological Mayan statue warriors.  Ties between him and Sandoval's past are hinted at, and then the story ends, abruptly, with the arrival of the dragon Quetzalcoatl, an electronic creature who shimmers into being on a myriad of computer screens and who Sandoval claims is her mentor.

That’s all I had when I finished, and then I was stunned to flip to the back cover and read what was printed there.  To say the synopsis and the contents of issue #1 seem to be separate stories is an understatement.  Not that what occurs in #1 won’t be able to fit, eventually, the suggested synoptic mold, but when a serialized chapter of a story is purposefully opaque, and then the same serialized chapter’s cover reveals more in two paragraphs than the entirety of the issue’s contents…it’s bewildering as to why the creators chose to go about the story in the rhythm and pace that they did.  Obviously the plot points not present in the story aren’t secrets, so why the unnecessary ambiguity?

Writer Jason L. Blair  is known primarily as a writer in RPG waters, both game books (Little Fears, Dreaming Cities) and video games (XBox 360’s Prey) as well as board and party games (Insects of God).  Unfortunately, his background shows all too readily here, as the entirety of The Long Count #1 is event and atmosphere alone, a character on a mission and in the middle of said mission, dodging dangers, lots of scenic accoutrements to color the setting, but the actual character of the characters and the story of the story nowhere in sight.  Blair spends every caption of allotted text keeping things mysterious, trying consciously to maintain the intrigue and inscrutability of the backstory, and succeeds, ultimately, in leaving the reader with nearly a throwaway book.

Which isn’t to say The Long Count #1 isn’t highly mysterious, or that it doesn’t sport a ridiculously intriguing atmosphere, and indeed, it’s so successful in bringing these factors to the fore that most will want to come back for issue #2 based on these merits alone.  The Mayan flavors and cyberpunk dress code enhance and excite, but then that’s about where the goodness ends.

The narrative itself is somewhat uninspired, dropping too many cliché patterns of overly self-important speech in order to keep Sandoval from speaking (or I suppose in this case, “thinking”) in simple, straight-forward, or explicit ways.  By trying to keep buried too many of the plot details, what remains is purely forced, quote-unquote atmospheric text, and by the end of just the first issue this proves a trying thing to continue with, especially considering that the back cover plainly spells it all out.  Which yes, could be the very thing that allows for the writer to take such a nondescript path in the first place, but the question once again would be…why?  Why remove all source of character and non-action event if the story doesn’t call for it?

Even more troubling, The Long Count was originally solicited as a 12-part maxi-series, but the cover to #1 states “One of Six”, meaning not only will the story end at, apparently, the  halfway mark before taking a break, but already we’re one issue down and with too little to show.

Leanne Buckley’s art (Put the Book Back on the Shelf: A Belle and Sebastian Anthology, Closer), however, is the primary reason to pick the issue up, no matter the overly-decompressed scripting.  She manages to lend the lion’s share of the book’s setting, the bleak, ashen, dying industrial wasteland ambiance, with a style that seems only one step removed from Chris Bachalo, though with a cleaner, crisper European cut in the vein of Juan Gimenéz (of Metabarons fame).  She utilizes what I thought to be both a brilliant and hysterical way of coating the scene with patterned black by using her own ink-stained fingerprints to coat the pages, a tactic that works ludicrously well and gives the world of The Long Count a much-needed sense of growing decay.  Page after page, the art is beautiful, if sometimes, like Bachalo (though not as often) suffering from a clarity of action.

The Long Count is a pretty book, and its ambiance is going to win it a definite number of fans.  The story, for all my gripes that it’s forced in style, does wield its coy use of its own complexity in a way that will, absolutely, appeal to many.  I hope for something more, more sincere, less obvious, a script that’ll let the art do its thing while it tells the damn story, rather than get itself wrapped up in the same obfuscating fog of Buckley’s illustrious style.  But even if it never does, TLC may yet prove a worthwhile yarn, on playful prose and its own sense of cool factor alone.