Broken Frontier

Mexico City is the focal point of a tragic love affair between Mark and Felicity in this second installment of the Wall After Wall series.

I was very skeptical about Narwain Publishing’s intention for a second installment of Wall After Wall, but upon reading this issue my mind has had all doubts erased. Mexico: Chernobyl is as brilliant as the inaugural story was, and a noticeable theme of examining love as tragic allegory is beginning to become apparent here.

This story opens with Mark wandering the streets of Mexico City in search of human contact. He needs to add meaning to his already soiled existence, and he decides to seek out the comforts of a young prostitute named Felicity. While in her company, Mark begins to find the solace he craves despite the facial deformity protruding out from the left side of his forehead. Felicity doesn’t seem to mind his disposition either as she begins to accept him for who he is. All appears to be going Mark’s way, but as he falls deeper and deeper in love with Felicity the ugly truth about cavorting with a prostitute brings out an even uglier revelation than the deformity on Mark’s face.

That pretty much sums up the harsh reality permeating this story, and I have to say that writer Dario Maria Gulli wrote with so much soulful conviction. It’s really rare to find a writer who can bring out such deep feelings of lost love, and I found that he tackled this story with the altruism of a jilted lover. He might have taken this story from personal experience, and if he did then I indeed applaud him for doing so. It’s great to find a writer you can work with in this medium with this much maturity and it certainly allows Narwain to shine with a project that differs so much more than the average superhero fare.

The only drawback here is that I didn’t think the art of Jesus Barony stood up to the solid writing of Dario Maria Gulli. Much of his work was illustrated in a quirky penciled style that failed to emit the type of emotional resonance found in the writing. Some of the panels look amateurish, and it surely lacked the stark quality found in the first installment of Wall After Wall.

Again, this shouldn’t hinder anyone from giving this issue a try. The strong quality of writing from Gulli is good enough to overlook the weaknesses within the art, and the dark sentiments of lost love are a human tragedy that most everyone can relate to at some point in life. This is a project that boasts a writer with a fine voice, and it’s one that should be heard in a medium dominated by repetitive adolescent male fantasies. So if you are looking for something with a bit more maturity and less superheroics, then look no further because Wall After Wall is a fine read.