Review: GRAYSON #8

GRAY-Cv8-ds-e7e64GRAYSON #8
Written by Tim Seeley, Tom King
Art by Mikel Janin, Jeromy Cox
Published by DC Comics
Release Date: March 4, 2015

Everything comes to a head in this month’s issue of Grayson. We finally learn about Mr. Minos’ role in the organization, the secrets he keeps, and how that will come to affect Dick Grayson and Helena Bertinelli as Spyral’s premier agents.

In both this issue and the last, the creative team has been moving slightly away from the fun side-story nature of the run and becoming more actively focused upon the overarching plot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering a great comic typically should have a great story, but I admit that it’s taking me some getting used to.

I think this is mostly because I’ve never seen the plot as a focus of the work—or perhaps I’ve just decided it wasn’t the focus since, in my mind, it’s never been the impressive part of what the series has been doing. However, now that it’s coming to the forefront of the book, it’s coming to the forefront of how I think about it too.

Firstly, we don’t cover much new ground in this issue. The main pushes of the story are things we’ve seen before. Our big bad isn’t wholly satisfying, nor is our mini-bad. Even the jokes about Dick’s (amazing) body seem less like callbacks to previous issues and more like a re-tread.

I hate to skip to the last few pages, especially since I can’t be explicit without spoiling the content, but the way you take both the issue and the whole narrative arc will likely hinge on what you thought of the ending.

The writers throw a huge lampshade on storytelling mechanics in comics, on what the readers come to expect, and what they don’t—and, yet, that’s almost exactly what I expected them to do. It’s this weird navigation of trope expectations that nearly mirrors the spy game itself, of double and triple and quadruple agents. It’s a “you think I don’t know what you’re doing but I do” thing that happens not just between spies, but also between astute readers and creative teams.

Like most readers, I want to go back through the issues and look for clues that I must have missed after the big reveal. I want to be amazed, to be fooled—and I’m not sure that lampshading that I wasn’t is necessarily the best way to subvert that desire. While I’m glad that the creative team sees the patterns I see in the work, it still makes me wonder, “Well, if you know, then why do it in the first place?” Pointing out a trope isn’t quite enough for me these days; I need that trope to be engaged with in some meaningful way and I didn’t quite get that with this ending. It makes the fool of certain characters within the narrative, but it still doesn’t make a fool of me, the trope-knowing reader, in the way it should have.

Of course, I’m still appreciative of the ending as it stands. While it’s not as complex as I would like, it shows an awareness of these patterns—one that is often lacked in other books. I’m more satisfied than I would have been without it, despite still wanting more at this point. It implies that there is a bigger story than what we’ve been given thus far and that more may indeed be coming.

And, even if I didn’t think this issue was as fresh as others past, it was still pretty fun and Dick’s characterization remains completely on point. My favorite line was a very pleasant and well-placed allusion to 1960’s Robin and I still love seeing high school girls making quips about Dick’s (well-formed) behind.

Whatever qualms I have with the plot, the art still remains as solid as ever. Dick still looks great—and so do the other agents. Janin never misses an opportunity to make his gentlemen look handsomely—I think the word I’m looking for is “stacked.” I talk about this every issue and I’m going to keep talking about it because I don’t care what anyone says: it’s a political victory.

And, actually, so is his how well he crafts faces. I noticed this particularly with one of the high school students—each character genuinely looks like an individual with well-communicated facial expressions and unique features. It means I’m not just paying attention to Dick Grayson’s assets; I’m looking at his face too. I’m not sure whether this is Janin’s style, or if he’s actively thinking about what’s been demonstrated to be attractive to female androphiles, but either way—I’m into it.

There were a few scenes where the colors read just a little bit heavy for me. I think the opening scenes that cut to Helena and Minos were a touch too red for me, such that I lost some of the definition of the characters or setting. The playing with color and background also strayed a bit too far into the surreal at certain points during a fight scene when I began to lose what was happening where. I was also surprised by Janin’s occasional choice not to make full use of panels, instead giving blank areas for insets to hover over. It might have been to minimize confusion, but it looked a little plain as compared to previous issues.

Still, Cox and Janin make a good team. I continue to enjoy the use of unconventional panel breaks that ramps up in the middle of a big action scene, only to calm down at a quieter point in the narrative. I’ll never stop loving techniques that show off what makes comics unique as a medium.

Grayson #8 didn’t quite hit the heights that I wanted. While the things that I love about it are still there, the overarching narrative has shown itself to be weaker than most of the individual stories told within each installment—leading to a dissatisfying resolution once we hit the climax of that narrative. There are a lot of new and different things this book is doing in terms of its visuals and its characterization, so I’m really hoping that the story of the next arc manages to catch up.

The Verdict: 7.0/10

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3 Comments

  1. Matt SantoriGriffith said:

    This was totally my book of the week. Fun dialogue. Awesome art. Last page reveal that gets me SUPER excited for June. This issue is everything I love about the balance King and Seeley are striking between super-hero adventure and spycraft.

  2. Troll_Post_Sorry said:

    I loved this. I felt it tied all the individual stories together quite nicely. I can see what you mean by overarching narrative not being as strong, but I don’t find that to be much of a negative in the long run,

  3. Keith Callbeck said:

    You hit the nail on the head with “both the issue and the whole narrative arc will likely hinge on what you thought of the ending.”
    I, unfortunately, had to have the ending explained to me as I never read the required reading for the final reveal to mean anything to me. It was like missing the set up of a magic trick. To the uninitiated, it was just a straight swap of one mystery character for another.
    It ended it on a thud for me, which is too bad as I’ve really been enjoying the book up til now.

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