Rock Candy Mountain #2
Rock Candy Mountain #2
Writer & Artist: Kyle Starks
Colors: Chris Schweizer
Rock Candy Mountain is one of the most surprising comics of the year. It’s an earnest, fun, and somewhat contemplative romp through history, humor and hobo-dom that I can’t recommend enough.
This second issue steps forward in a pretty big way, establishing more about the mysterious Jackson, setting up some key plot points (and it seems, characters) to come and heightens the stakes surprisingly by the issue’s end.
There’s talk of journeys, hope, fiction, and reality that add a surprising weight and resonance to Jackson’s journey as well as the cast of minor characters here. There’s no doubting that these characters know they have unrealistic expectations of where they’re headed as well as who they’re headed there with but they continue forward. It’s endearing in a very earnest way – humor and fun hobo fight clubs all along the way.
Most notably, it’s the comic’s adherence to a kind of effervescent half-true-to-life lingo and zingers that I find so endearing. The dialogue is lively, snappy. It’s not always laugh-out-loud funny, no, but the characters have their own voices, their own ways about them that play off each other incredibly well without being flanderizations of any one trope that characters in these kinds of funny, off-kilter books sometimes fall into.
The art maintains its minimal but clean style from the first and the scenes all feel different enough from each other. The colors, something I wasn’t overly impressed with in the first issue, are slightly improved here. There’s a lot in the brown-beige realm and I think there’s more opportunity for a vibrancy that matches the narrative but overall, the artistic efforts here are very solid and fitting.
Rock Candy Mountain’s second outing isn’t perfect, but it’s damn good and, in its very own, very unique way, refreshing. I’m ready for the next one.
Writer & Artist: Kyle Starks
Colors: Chris Schweizer
Rock Candy Mountain is one of the most surprising comics of the year. It’s an earnest, fun, and somewhat contemplative romp through history, humor and hobo-dom that I can’t recommend enough.
This second issue steps forward in a pretty big way, establishing more about the mysterious Jackson, setting up some key plot points (and it seems, characters) to come and heightens the stakes surprisingly by the issue’s end.
There’s talk of journeys, hope, fiction, and reality that add a surprising weight and resonance to Jackson’s journey as well as the cast of minor characters here. There’s no doubting that these characters know they have unrealistic expectations of where they’re headed as well as who they’re headed there with but they continue forward. It’s endearing in a very earnest way – humor and fun hobo fight clubs all along the way.
Most notably, it’s the comic’s adherence to a kind of effervescent half-true-to-life lingo and zingers that I find so endearing. The dialogue is lively, snappy. It’s not always laugh-out-loud funny, no, but the characters have their own voices, their own ways about them that play off each other incredibly well without being flanderizations of any one trope that characters in these kinds of funny, off-kilter books sometimes fall into.
The art maintains its minimal but clean style from the first and the scenes all feel different enough from each other. The colors, something I wasn’t overly impressed with in the first issue, are slightly improved here. There’s a lot in the brown-beige realm and I think there’s more opportunity for a vibrancy that matches the narrative but overall, the artistic efforts here are very solid and fitting.
Rock Candy Mountain’s second outing isn’t perfect, but it’s damn good and, in its very own, very unique way, refreshing. I’m ready for the next one.
A Look Inside
