Declan had been silent for years and now he is making up for lost time.
What They Say:
Declan Thomas steps into other men’s insanity, fighting the horrific creatures lurking there. But a demonic presence hiding in the real world feeds on madness. And he’s coming for Declan.
The Review: (please note that content portions of review may contain spoilers)
Finally free from his seeming catatonic coma, Declan is outside and in the sun under his own volition for the first time in a long, long time and he is on a mission. Rather than attempting to just experience the world as it now exists or even more simply to feel the wind in his face as he walks, he has a purpose as he wants to show Reece something in order for her to have a basis for them to have a conversation on what is going on. As he walks the street Declan looks at numerous people but is unable to find what he needs until he sees a man who is complaining of hearing voices and he believes he found the right person and he asks Reece close her eyes.
When she opens them again she finds that Declan has managed to help her see inside the man’s mind and the hellish, alien scene that he says is within the man which looks like a nightmare world of bizarre architecture of the world gone mad were the laws of physics are on hold that Declan calls “The Hungry World”. As they stand next to the man Declan singled out in this landscape devoid of any of the other people who had been around them before Reece closed her eyes suddenly strange, twisted and just not human shapes start walking toward them but to Reece’s surprise they slip harmlessly and silently past them as Declan explains that his presence has defiled the world they find so comfortable forcing them to exodus. Declan again has Reece close her eyes and when she does she finds herself back in the real, and much warmer, world and that the man they had approached suddenly appears to be healed and no longer plagued by voices.
But as one person is cured another runs into the one person even Declan fears as the predator seen before is still walking the streets and his method of dealing with people who he finds to be crazy is completely the opposite of Declan and he looks not to help others but to feed his own hunger. As the man hunts Declan shows Reece his past and tries to give her a sense of where he came from but has Declan passed through the years simply to become the feast for a monster now, and is Reece going to discover that her act of humanity in helping the strange man will turn out to be a mistake she won’t live long enough to regret when the predator catches the scent of his most cherished prey?
The second issue of Colder builds upon the mystery of the first and it drops an incredible amount of revelations on the reader as to just what it is that the monster that changed Declan into a man who grows colder is looking for as well as the horrors that Declan encountered as he was in the “care” of those who were theoretically tasked with helping those who fell outside the norms of societal behavior. Along with this the issue presents an incredible and imaginative world for the author’s vision to come to life in all its rather unworldly and disturbing beauty and the landscape alone is almost worth the price of admission.
On a narrative level the book is amazing with its building of Declan and the strange world he both lives in and can visit inside of others which creates a powerful and rather intoxicating book. On a different level though there is something substantive that stands out in the process of telling the tale as while mental illness is both frightening and fascinating in its mysteries the idea that “crazy” can be the result of some sort of other world or its inhabitants is a bit of a slap in the face to those with, or who have friends or family with, mental illnesses. Obviously if someone were to write a story like this and instead of “crazy” the creatures created homosexuality by their presence which could be cured by driving them out it’d never see the light of day from any remotely mainstream publisher, yet somehow here it is acceptable to act like somehow those who have medical conditions as real and scientific in nature as cancer are OK to use as story fodder since their illnesses are largely not understood and it almost feels like a step back into the same dark ages some of the flashbacks portray the supposedly helping institutions as having done in the past yet the presence of the other world might make one wonder if those efforts weren’t as far off base and barbarous as they in fact were, especially as presented here.
While the idea of mental illnesses having such an exotic underpinning is fascinating from a story point of view there is the idea that even fiction should have a bit of responsibility when it comes to not propagating stereotypes or making things worse as well as alienating some who might otherwise also enjoy the story and perhaps creating some harm where none was intended but which the material here might well cross over a theoretical line. If one can either ignore or set the matter aside and treat it as a wildly fictional story the issue provides a fantastic build up of tension and otherworldliness that will provide a tale most fantastic, though if one can’t the story’s mechanisms might leave them even colder than the series protagonist.
In Summary:
Where the first issue had a lot of dialogue that asked questions to which there where either no answers or answers that the cast asking couldn’t know, the second issue provides a whole lot of the opposite as Declan shows Reece and the audience both the world he lives in now as well as the one he experienced along the way to his current place in life and the almost unbelievable existence he currently inhabits. While the visuals are amazing and the premise is remarkable unique there is a faint undertow that might make some find they can’t really get into the narrative as it asks too much when meshed against a world they know too well from experience, first hand or otherwise, but those who can set that feeling aside or who don’t have the experiences may discover that this title has the potential to be one of the gems of recent years.
Grade: A-