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Dept. H #3
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: June 22nd, 2016.
Written by: Matt Kindt
Illustrated by: Matt Kindt, Sharlene Kindt
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Picking up where the first two issues left off, the third entry in Matt and Sharlene Kindt's Dept. H opens with a splash page that shows a diver on the ocean floor, ominous tentacles protruding up towards the surface, surrounding the figure.
From there, we flash back to a scene from Mia's childhood. She and a friend - Lily -are sitting on the deck of a boat, killing time with a contest, seeing who can hold their breath the longest. The friend bails at two minutes. When it's Mia's turn, she holds her breath so long she blacks out. We learn from her narration that this has always been a problem for her - she never knows when to quit.
She wakes up in the present, on the edge of a cliff towards the bottom of the ocean. Her suit was malfunctioning, she got too much oxygen and passed out. She was able to shoot her harpoon into the wall in time to stop herself from falling to the bottom - otherwise she'd be long gone. It turns out her brother lost contact with her and radioed for help. That's why Q showed up to fix Mia's suit. Raj, however, is still out there somewhere in the ocean alone.
Mia makes it into the base through the airlock and interrupts a meeting about the status of the base's systems. She tells the rest of the crew that Raj's suit was damaged by a giant squid, she wants their help finding him. The only one who volunteers to help is Lily. When the girls are alone they talk, about Mia's desire to find out what really happened to her father, about her relationship with Alaine. Just as they're about to launch the sub and go find Raj they find out that Jerome has gone nuts and is threatening the entire base - they need Mia and Lily to help deal with this before going out to find Raj. Only Lily can cut off his access from the network and stop him from sabotaging the base.
Something's up with Jerome. They quarantine him and cut off his access but Lily says 'he looks contagious.'
Flashback to the boat. Mia and Raj are older now, she's concerned that even if Lily is the best tech around, that she's manipulating their father. Raj doesn't seem so concerned.
Back in the present, it seems Jerome got further into the computer system before Lily took him out than anyone realized - and that he's done what he can to be one with the sea. Hatches have been opened that need to be closed or everyone is pretty much doomed. And as Mia and the others set out to fix what they can fix, she starts to wonder just what Dept. H has really been up to down here all this time.
Matt Kindt's story and art combine in beautifully bizarre ways to keep the mystery that started in the first issue coming along nicely in this third chapter. The artwork is gorgeous. Not hyper-realistic but certainly realistic enough. At times appropriately exaggerated and at other times admirably restrained, the pencil and ink work for Dept. H has created a beautiful world for the cast of increasingly unusual characters to play off of. Sharlene Kindt's coloring is perfect - it too is sometimes understated, she knows when to pull back and that sometimes less is more but the shadowy interiors of the undersea base are appropriately grey/black and gloomy looking while the sense that take place in the ocean itself understandably more colorful - but also wide open, really just massive in scope. It's not a surprise that these two work as well together as they do, but it is surprising just how amazingly consistent they've been so far.
Dept. H is a fantastic blend of human drama, sci-fi tinged horror, suspenseful mystery and well thought out character development. It's as beautiful to look at as it is fascinating to read. There's nothing else out there like this right now.
And on top of that we get a letters page and, as Kindt promised, a page showing off some cool sketch and design work demonstrating the artistic process that goes into creating each and every issue of this series (these aren't going to be reproduced in the eventual trade edition).
