“At least I’m not a cat.”
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Jeff Lemire
Letterer: Steve Wands
What They Say:
Stuck in an urban labyrinth of his own torment, melancholy building inspector Will and his talking canine companion fight their way through a dangerous metropolitan maze and head underground on the hunt to find his long-gone daughter.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The further we get into this book the more I like it, but the more I also want to get to some answers or closure for our leading character. This series has definitely caught my attention and has rolled around in my brain for days and days after each issue, leaving me excited to see more and where it’ll lead to. The story is one that feels like others of this nature from him with something darkly personal and delivered with the kind of stylized artwork that’s appropriate for it, very rough, kind of angular, sparse in color design but still distinctive. And at the same time, it delivers something that is really intense and captivating in a way that you can’t get from a lot of other series.
With this installment, Will is on the other side now, inside the maze itself, and nothing is what he thought it would be like. As the dog Vern says, dreams are finicky things and what he thought it would be from one perspective is now different here. Vern’s amusing as he’s looking for what he lost as well, that being Lisa, and it provides an interesting connection for the two of them with her. But he also doesn’t want to talk about Lisa at all and has a real attitude early on that’s comical in how these two interact with each other. But Vern is there to help guide Will, who would be going along in a mopey kind of way that would take forever otherwise, and the fact they have the maze tattoo helps a lot. As does having a pen that lets them map their progress through the city streets.
The journey is one that takes a good bit of time for the portion we get here, which is made engaging with the way Lemire has illustrated it, and the dialogue with Vern adds a special touch to it. But we also have him feeling like he’s being followed and there’s another person there he spends some time with that has the disturbing bull tattoo that unleashes a lot of other emotions. What’s most ominous, and makes the most sense, is that it seems like the journey is one that is going to take him into the subway system as the red string leads there and is drawing him in. That’s a place Vern won’t go and he does his best to try and get him to not do it. You know Will has to go but you also wish he’d listen to Vern. We only get the briefest of tastes as to what’s going on there but it’s definitely disturbing as it shows more of what Will has lost, teasing out the pain even more.
In Summary:
Mazebook continues to deliver an engaging experience across the board. It’s defined itself well over the first three issues so it’s no surprise with what we get here. This one just takes us to a new place as we get into the maze itself and Will finds some help that will let him work toward finding what he’s lost. It’s a slow but engaging read as we watch how he handles things but a lot of what makes it work is Lemire’s artwork here and its style of moving us around the maze.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: December 15th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
