Creative Staff:
Story: Lights
Art: Lights
Colors: Lights
Letterer: Lights
What They Say:
Despite the thrill and renewed sense of freedom she is feeling under the influence of her new and mysterious companion, En is forced to discover a dark truth about her ex-lover, Priest. It seems the boundaries of spirituality and her world as she knows it are beginning to blur.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we cross the halfway mark of this six issue series with this issue I still have no real idea what Skin & Earth is supposed to be about. Lights has presented an intriguing world but one that doesn’t have the foundations to hold it together. I like the designs and want to know the why and how of much of it because it is interesting but the lack of that combined with less than a well defined narrative has this kind of just floating from issue to issue where you’re somewhat lost on it. En’s time with Mitsuki shook things up the last time around but in this issue we again get burned by the lack of a firm world in trying to grasp what’s going on as Mitsuki brings En to new places.
With plans for a bit of revenge on Priest for the way that he’s destroyed En’s heart so totally and fully, that has Mitsuki working with her to enact it. To En’s surprise, however, that has them using the bypass tunnel to get outside. There’s curious aspects to this but what I like is that Mitsuki knows of a smuggler’s path that allows them to sneak into the pinks area to see how they live their lives. This has En talking about how Priest used to emulate them jokingly by draping his body over things with them always being so passed out but the reality is that when they do get into their pill popping modes they’re out for days because of it. It’s a surreal experience seeing them all passed out while wearing masks but it also doesn’t land because the world building is so bad combined with the uncertainty of who Mitsuki sees there that spooks her so much.
When we do get Mitsuki and En out in the wilds where we revisit where she and Priest used to go there are some decent moments as En laments the way she had so many good times here previously. Mitsuki and En have a decent enough time with the swimming, though the sudden bloody knee just feels weird (knee hats!) and then leading into the discovery of a gravestone while exploring the woods a bit and finding a path. This reveals things that… I don’t know. I mean, you can imagine that it means that En has discovered things of herself, that she may not be real, that this may all be a dream, or she’s some sort of clone or something, when they find a series of buried boxes in front of the marker. The book has done such a poor job structurally in connecting us to this world and how it operates that it just becomes a mess.
In Summary:
With two more issues to go after this I’m still feeling fairly lost with what it’s trying to accomplish. The series has some interesting things floating throughout it and I like Lights’ design work with the characters and visuals for the world but it’s not landing as a whole. Perhaps it’ll work better when read in full but it also has to function in monthly installments and it really is struggling there. The interesting moments can’t sustain it and instead just points out the weaknesses even more. Which just makes it all the more frustrating.
Grade: C-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 11th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99