Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Dept. H #8

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Dept. H #8



    Dept. H #8
    Released by: Dark Horse Comics
    Released on: November 23rd, 2016.
    Written by: Matt Kindt
    Illustrated by: Matt Kindt, Sharlene Kindt
    Purchase From Amazon

    Not caught up? Get caught up. Issue eight of Matt and Sharlene Kindt's Dept. H picks up directly where issue seven left off. The base is flooding. Water from outside is coming in fast and something is blocking the drains. Mia and Roger are up to their necks in water and running out of time. Bob is going to grab Raj and then head over to help, but Raj isn't in the best shape. Regardless, they make a break for it as the place starts to fall apart around them. Bob says to Raj that none of this is accidental, it's happening too perfectly.

    Bob and Raj get to the compartment where Mia and Roger are trapped. They try to clear the area in front of the door but it's no use, they won't be able to do it before they drown. Inside the compartment, Mia wonders aloud if Bob is the one who killed her dad. He's former Special Forces, lots of experience with weapons. Meanwhile Bob himself is trying his damnedest to find a way to get them out. They attempt to make their way through the ducts and vents of the base to the computer system in hopes of redirecting the flow of the incoming water.

    As this happens, Roger gives Mia some background information on Bob. He tells her of how he first met him in the jungles of Belize where he was covered in blood, surrounded by dead soldiers. Mia's father, Hari, felt that Bob's experience in the theater of war made him indestructible. On his last job he was sent to take out a Venezuelan drug lord who was actually working on unleashing a virus on an unsuspecting world. It went south, the Russians said it was an act of war and the U.S. government abandoned him to avoid an encounter. Bob retreated into the jungle and was left a wanted man. And then the legends started, about a beast that would decapitate drug dealers and kidnappers and leave their headless bodies on the steps of government buildings. When guerillas went after Hari and his lab crew, Bob stepped in and took care of it. Bob recognized Roger and Hari from the pages of National Geographic.

    But what about that water? There sure is a lot of it…

    You've got to love the way that Kindt is exploring the backgrounds of the different characters and their connections to Hari by way of intimate conversations that take place between Roger and Mia as the world falls apart around them. It's a great narrative framework and the story exploits it really well. We get the character development and the background information that we need to care about these characters and to help explore the mystery of Hari's death that caused all of this in the first place, but never at the expense of action or adventure. This is very clever storytelling and the artwork compliments it really well. A great example of how words and pictures collide in really unusual but striking ways in this series is how Kindt illustrates Bob and Raj working their way through the vents, using arrows to guide our eyes and placing word balloons explaining everything in just the right spots. And that last page? Damn… that's creepy. Sharlene Kindt's coloring work continues to be the perfect accent to Matt Kindt's pencils - really, this series is pretty much perfect. Dept. H is weird, wonderful and thrilling.

    We also get some interesting letters in the back pages, as well as a few conceptual sketches and an absolutely killer wraparound cover.
      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    Working...
    X