Things go off the rails.
Creative Staff:
Story: Patrick Kindlon
Art: Stefano Simeone
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
Nussbaum is chased through a beautiful landscape of living art…and his only instinct is to wreck it. He’s got three groups pursuing him, two of which won’t be satisfied with anything less than his head. Things have gotten a little morbid in the offices of Caucasus Corp. Death sells, but who’s buying?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I’ve definitely enjoyed the weirdness of the first two issues of Shoplifters Will Be Liquidated as it was the kind of property that took a little work to really connect with. Patrick Kindlon’s got a particular style about him with his books and once you sync into it you’re in for an interesting time. I also really liked his pairing with Stefano Simeone as Simeon was able to really capture the kind of crazy things that Kindlon must have been envisioning and bringing it to life well. The exploration of the sides as we understood them and the weirdness of being under the city made for some really good reading material.
With the third issue, however, it goes off the rails and I’m not quite sure what to take from it. Simeone’s artwork is once again solid throughout as we go through a couple of different places but the story seems like it’s spinning to load a bit and not quite getting there. Nussbaum is the main attraction in my view as he deals with those down below but he’s in a weird state between things here and doesn’t come across a quite as in control of his own storyline as he has been. That may be part of the unsettled part of it but there’s also just the reality that as we see him struggle below the city – only to end u knocked out and plucked up by some significantly large being – that it feels like a pointless struggle as it’s hard to tell what all is going on here.
Within the city, we get Provo going on about how he built this empire himself (something we doubt) and he’s frustrated by the state of affairs in general. We do see him starting to move pieces where he needs to in order to handle what’s going on with Nussbaum, who is MIA now in his view. But we also get the other couple of corporate players whose name escapes me that are trying to figure out their own score to win more in the corporate world. This shows us some areas where there are no cameras to build trust but are more designed to not have lawsuits and so forth. It’s interesting but all of it as a whole just left me uncertain as to what I was really supposed to take away from this issue and what it does to help build the next issue.
In Summary:
After two weird but interesting issues, this one feels like a misstep. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from this one other than Nussbaum has now been taken by someone else after barely surviving his own encounter and what it’ll bring us to remains to be seen. There are interesting moments here and there and great artwork in general but it lacks something to really latch onto with the main storyline that feels like it’s carrying us through it.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: December 11th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
