Friday, August 14, 2015

Tabatha by Neil Gibson and Caspar Wijngaard


Rating: WORTHY!

I favorably reviewed Twisted Dark by this author back in April 2015. Even so, this comic was much better than that one, being very inventive, truly engaging all the way through, and in color!

Luke delivers mail and puts up with a lot of crap, and not only from his boss. He thinks he's in love with this young woman who lives at one of his delivery addresses, but it's probably just infatuation (which she appears smart enough to recognize; she probably gets it a lot!). He lives with his brother, Fin, and his brother's wife. Neither he nor his bro seem to have a really good handle on heterosexual relationships - which might be important later.

Luke gets through his day by reminding himself to keep his eye on the prize. He has a purpose for putting up with all this crap and it's not long before we discover what it is: he's actually been casing houses for a series of robberies he and his crew (bro, bro's wife, bro's wife's bro) are planning. All goes well until they enter this one house which is evidently owned by someone who works in movie special effects. The resident is also very much into this sex doll he has.

The guys decide to pose the doll and decorate her with flowers - and not in a nice way. They don't dream for a minute that this petty act of juvenile vandalism will come back to haunt them big time when the psychotic movie effects guy returns home and sees what they have done. You see, he held this particular doll in very high regard. Worse, he knows where they live.

Just when you think you know what's going on here, you find there's another twist. Twisted is what this story is, on several levels, and all the way to the end. Or is it?

I really enjoyed this one from start to finish. It moved fast, kept me guessing as it frequently insisted upon wrong-footing me, and it delivered a great story. Note that it's rather sexual and gory, with rather more objectification of women than I like to see, but in that I'm nearly always disappointed when it comes to graphic novels. On the other hand, the main female character was a strong one, which was nice to see, so those concerns aside, I recommend this one.