The elusive end.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Tyler Crook
Letterer: Tyler Crook
What They Say:
Through the decades, Colonel Randall Weird faces his past and future from all angles, and often out of order, as he struggles to maintain his sanity and protect himself—and those around him—from a fractured universe that swarms with untold dangers.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of Colonel Weird delivered exactly the kind of strangeness I was hoping for. We’ve had plenty of stories about Weird in the mainline book before so there was a certain level of expectation to be hit for it even as it digs into his story more direction. Tyler Crook has done a really great job of capturing some of that mainline book with its look while also delivering it in his own style so that it feels unique enough and like it’s Weird’s story. With it taking place across several different points in time, we continue to get distinctive moments throughout but also a great unified look that really helps to deliver an engaging experience.
With Weird’s narration having him talk about the way he hasn’t seen his own death, and that it may be that that is the thing that he’s forgotten, we continue to trip through various stages of his past while not coming close to his time at the Farm. Which is probably for the best as crossing over into that may make things more complicated. There’s a lot to like in seeing these times in the past, such as a little boy who is regularly bullied by some classmates. Randy’s just not able to defend himself – it is three against one most of the time – but even if he could I suspect that it’s just not in his nature at this point in his life. But at the same time we also see how he struggles with this sense of not belonging at all and that the other kids pick up on it, which is why he’s at such a distance from everyone and unable to make friends. It’s painful to watch as we see his parents trying to figure out the best way to help while also being big picture concerned because of the way events play out.
Randall’s time across other periods is definitely interesting as well. We see him going through more of his space exploration and some of the period before that. His time with Eve seems to be making real waves across the timelines in general as it even gets to him as a child at one point, leaning on his feeling of being alone forever. The space time where he’s on alien worlds and dealing with threats isn’t as deeply explored but it hints at some good potential there. What I really like in a weird way is that we get to see some of what was going on when Weird was part of the group with Black Hammer. The fight there is the good fight but he knows that bad things are coming for Black Hammer himself when he talks about his daughter and as the anti-god appears over the city. There are so many key areas to Weird’s life that one can imagine it’d be easy to add half a dozen more to this and flesh it out all the more.
In Summary:
Cosmagog is pretty much what I expected that a Colonel Weird book would be like and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. I can see the threads of the bigger picture but it’s really just going through and experiencing parts of his life, understanding who he is more, that does the most good. It doesn’t really change anything with the core original series but we get to know what he was like before things went crazy for him and the hard life that he had always feeling apart. Lemire’s script really does a great job of immersing us into who he is at these various points in time while Crooks artwork takes that storytelling up a few notches to make it feel truly lived in. I could enjoy just a series about him as a child and the struggle that he has there. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 25th, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
