(Image Comics, 2014)

Written and Lettered by Ed Brisson
Illustrated by Simon Roy
Colored by Simon Gough

“Ok…I know what’s going on…oh wait…that’s different…didn’t see that one comi…oh no…that was unexpected…ugh…his head exploded all over the….is that a sword of Kahless?…”

Oh crap.  I hope to God I never wake up in a field.  Better yet, never in The Field, for that, comic friends, is a twisted and dark path filled with more disturbing things than those creepy, flaxen haired children who walk among the corn.

Ed Brisson (Peter Panzerfaust, Sheltered) has delivered the second issue in his disturbing, you-can’t-imagine-what-happens-next comic The Field from Image Comics.  Where is this going?  That’s the genius of Brisson’s narrative, because I really have no idea.

In the first issue we met our main character, a man who awakens in a field in his boxer shorts and is picked up by a homicidal bible salesman.  The two go to a diner where said salesman unleashed a volley of death on the customers, and we’re left with the image of a group of bikers called “the Smoke Eaters”, who are looking for our boxered hero.  There is no coming out of this tailspin.

Or is there?

In issue two, Brisson changes everything you think you know about what’s going on.  (Which, reviewing the previous paragraph, is very little indeed.)  The certainties are anything but.   Christian (the salesman) is the bad guy.  Or…maybe not as much as we thought.  The Smoker Eaters, who are looking for Grant (we find out a little back story on our protagonist) are shown a little more, and they are definitely bad guys.  Or are they?  Brisson has me as a reader jumping, and that’s good for now, it keeps the book interesting.  But I think too much of that, without a base certainty about the characters, will make me want to read this book less.  As for now, it works like a charm, and has me so confused that I have to read at least one more issue, just to try and get a handle on what is going on.

Simon Roy (Prophet, Jan’s Atomic Heart) has an emotive style that lets you into Grant’s head without the exposition that is sometimes required.  He has the ability to show dramatic movement in some of the panels that make them so much more effective.  Who wants to see the aftermath of a motorcycle wreck when you could see the motorcyclists’ face bouncing down the road?  Well, perhaps that’s not the best example, but this is a mature book to be certain, and Roy does a fine job illustrating it as such.

Brisson and Roy have set the hook with this one, and I can do nothing but be dragged through the murky waters of The Field for another issue.  Brisson has given some clue that there will be more information coming, and has introduced some new characters.  (Mr. Brisson, the Tomorrow Men gave me no amount of joy.)  So pick up the second issue as well as the first if you haven’t yet.  Grant is lost in his own mind, and we along with him.  Might as well enjoy it.

___________________________

Brad Gischia is a writer and artist living in the frozen Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He is married and has three kids and a dog, who all put up with his incessant prattling about comic books.