Writer: Shawn Granger
Artists: Orlando Baez, Kenneth Landgraf
Publisher: King Tractor Press
I think calling the first issue of Family Bones “uneven” would be a grave understatement. I can’t say I’ve seen this problem before, but I found the layout and panel composition to be all over the place. A single panel from one scene might pop up in the midst of a completely different scene, and not in a way that balances two ongoing situations. Many panels just don’t really follow logically from one to the next. I have to admit, I’m very tempted to cut out every panel and rearrange them at random just to see if the story reads any better that way.
Because right now, like the panel composition, the story itself is a bit of a mess. Characters pop in and out at random with no real introduction. When a few of them appear in a single scene, it’s hard to tell them apart since the reader doesn’t even know most of their names yet. It also doesn’t help that the young protagonist, Sean, isn’t named until three quarters of the way into the issue.
Sean gets dumped at his relatives’ house while his parents go on vacation. He’s supposed to be taken to his grandparents’ house, but there’s an awkward transition from Sean riding in the car with his mom to Sean riding in the car to, presumably (she’s unnamed) his grandmother, who tells him that now she’s taking him to his aunt and uncle’s. So he’s with his aunt and uncle, and his uncle hates him for pretty much no discernible reason other than he’s young and likes to play around with his lighter. The uncle randomly kicks the crap out of Sean and ditches him in the middle of an empty field on more than one occasion.
What does this issue have to do with being based on a true story? Beats me. The action is random and chaotic, which I guess is a pretty good mirror of real life. But seriously, it doesn’t make any sense in the context of the story, mostly because there isn’t any solid context. The cover claims to be “The First Bloody Issue,” but it’s been pretty bloodless so far, unless we’re talking about the raccoon that gets shot at by . . . well, I don’t know who that character was either.
Sometimes it’s the simple things that matter: clean and geometric panels, character names, motivations, one scene at a time. The creators need to slow down and figure out first how to actually tell the story before attempting anything stylistic, daring or challenging to the production. Right now the only challenge for me is figuring out what it is I just read.
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