Arcadia #02
Writer: Alex Paknadel
Artist: Eric Scott Pfeifer
In Arcadia, a child psychologist assesses Giacomo, the son of the digital Lee and Sam, and discovers there’s something very different about him. Lee is pulled out of a plastic surgery procedure by officials and flown to Beijing to examine a Homesteader’s corpse. Officials believe that the real world is conspiring to introduce death into Arcadia. In the real world, Valentin confronts Lee about his illegal midnight calls to his suicidal daughter Coral in Arcadia.
Alex Paknadel layers on the mythos in the second issue of Arcadia. In a monthly book this is very hard on the reader. I’m not saying that comic book readers are lazy, just busy with sensory overload from other sources. Do you remember what you did 30 days ago?
Since Paknadel starts issue two drastically different from issue one, it messes with the senses of the reader and keeps you off-balance. The questions are starting to mount without the presence of answers showing up anytime soon.
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The first issue was compelling enough to want to read issue two, the second issue continues the complex story and begins to feel like an episode of Game of Thrones with snips of the different plot threads. Additional characters are introduced and the reader might be closing in on who the main villain is in the book. There are several “grey” characters in story so far and you wish that the issue was longer so that these characters could be flushed out more.
Artist Eric Scott Pfeiffer gets in my head by the second page and I will have that image stuck in my brain for the rest of the week. Who or what was that? This image motivates and frustrates me for the rest of the issue as I wanted to see more of this inside world. Pfeiffer’s work excels on the darker panels and adds to an already tense feel.
Arcadia #02 evoked a frustrated emotion as I didn’t get all the answers or enough plot progression as I wanted. The art of storytelling in a six issue mini series is tough because you have to entertain your reader month to month, but you also need to save some story for a big payoff in the final two issues.
Did issue two entertain, yes. Will I read issue three, yes. Would I like more answers about the universe that Paknadel created, absolutely!
