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Dept. H #10
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: January 25th, 2017.
Written by: Matt Kindt
Illustrated by: Matt Kindt, Sharlene Kindt
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Mia and Roger are still stuck in that room. There's a leak above and the lights have been knocked out but the humming Roger can hear means they have power. It must be a short. Mia tries to tape the leaking pipe shut but what does it matter? They're surrounded by water with no way out. She tries to get ahold of anyone on the radio, but her calls get nothing but static in return.
She asks Roger to tell her a story, his story. He obliges.
Roger met Mai's father when they were in university. Roger was a film student so when her dad posted an ad for a cameraman, he answered. They became fast friends and Roger's aspirations soon changed. Roger had dated Mia's mother before she became involved with her dad, and tensions arose later not because Roger lost the girl, but because he didn't think Hari should have ever had a family in the first place - he was too single minded, too obsessed with exploring, to do right by them.
We see this first hand through a flashback scene. Mia, as a kid, gets bitten by a snake, a viper. Her dad is nowhere around so her mother has Roger bring her to the hospital on his motorcycle. Had Roger not been there, Mia would have died. Roger stuck by the guy, but was it for Hair's sake or was it just a way to stay close to the girl he lost to him? We also learn that those 'vacations' Mia's mom used to take weren't vacations. Every once in a while she'd have her fill of Hari's obsessive ways and just take off for weeks at a time. The Green Hole Expedition in South America would prove to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Roger warned Hari that they shouldn't be there, something wasn't right about the place, but Hari wouldn't listen - the expedition was all that mattered to him.
Each new issue of Dept. H peels back another layer of the mystery surrounding Hari's death and Mia's obsession (wonder where she gets that from?) in solving it. This time around, we get Roger's story, his connection not just to Mia's old man, but to her mother and in just as many ways, to herself. It's enough to make you question everything you know about the case thus far, and at the same time, it makes you admire Roger all the more in some ways. What he went through with Hari would not have been easy on a physical level, but it's the emotional aspect of his story that really sinks in - and that makes you question where his loyalties really lie. Interesting stuff. There's more to it than this, of course, but we won't spoil the ending here.
And the artwork - damn. Kindt's style is very unorthodox and unconventional but you can't really imagine anyone doing a better job at illustrating this story than he. There's a lot of passion and energy to the illustrations that, combined with the water color style coloring (added by Sharlene Kindt) and the quirky penciling, really make this one stand out from pretty much everything else on the racks these days. There's nothing like Dept. H out there right now, this is wholly unique and refreshing in its originality - and its addictiveness!
