Things become more beautifully complicated.

Creative Staff:
Story: Rafael Albuquerque, Mike Johnson
Art: Rafael Albuquerque

What They Say:
Chrononaut Joshua is stuck in the dimension known as the Meld, captured by a camp of rebels that oppose the maniacal Tyrant and his champion, the Spear. When Joshua remembers his mission, the past and the future collide to reveal the peril he must face.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of this series was a highly intriguing piece with what it presented as we started to get an idea of the kind of mess of things that existed here with Joshua doing something dangerous in order to save someone he cares about. It’s a standard story motivation point to be sure, but it put him into the position of being a Chrononaut that has thrust him into The Meld, a place outside of things where many different types of people have ended up over the years from all sorts of places, making it a really interesting and almost kind of post-apocalyptic place in a way. What also really made the book interesting is the way it lays out everything with its heavy use of color to make it clear when and where events are taking place, something that can be done really poorly but is executed incredibly well here.

While a lot of what we got before was establishing Joshua’s past and motivations, the experiment/mission itself and his initial time in the Meld, this one carries forth with that but also adds more of what’s going on in general across the spectrum. One of the more intriguing parts is where we see a story being told in the present about Dr. Hamm and the military group he’s with that’s tracking a storm to get data, but he needs data from inside the storm, which the team is not interested in. It’s a hair raising ride watching it play out here in just a few panels, but when things go south for it, it shifts the tale to the past where Hamm and just one survivor from the team have now found themselves some six hundred thousand years in the past. Hamm’s reasons for wanting to go to the past are unclear here, but his panic over going back too far makes you want to know more and seeing what kind of arc may be ahead of this pair certainly leaves you craving more, especially if you believe in the Butterfly Effect.

Joshua’s time in the Meld has him learning some of what’s going on from Nila about how it works, with people dropping in like him, but also realizing that there are those born here as well such as Nila. The structure of the Meld reveals more about how the Tyrant runs the place pretty intensely while she and her people are regularly on the move to avoid the Spear and the danger he represents. But the arrival of Joshua, whose craft is of particular desire by the Tyrant, offers the council a chance to negotiate with the Tyrant in order to get a reprieve since things are going worse and worse for them. There’s a lot of intriguing little bits here that are revealed, both from Nila’s desire to rebel and what her youth represents and to how the Tyrant himself deals with things when it comes to Spear, who you see as being a fearful opponent but is very deferential to the Tyrant. That just leaves you wanting to know more of his own game. Joshua’s life is very much in flux here and he’s not even aware of all the forces that are being aligned against him.

In Summary:
EI8HT spends its time doing a good bit more world building this time around and having that on top of what we learned in the first installment goes a long way towards making this feel very lived in and real. With the artwork, dialogue and overall pacing of it here, it’s very easy to be drawn into this world even as it moves back and forth between stories, time periods and worlds. Each piece is really interesting on its own and could sustain its own story with what it wants to tell, but weaving it together as a whole narrative just takes it to a whole other level. I’m still feeling like I’m hedging my bets just a little bit with the book because it’s building so much and doing so many good things, but has the potential to fall apart. But what we have so far is highly engaging for me and each issue leaves me wanting to have another installment right away, both for the story and characters that we’re getting to know but also for the beautifully detailed artwork and color design. This is a rich book that really needs a wider audience as it’s doing some great work here.

Grade: B+

Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 18th, 2015
MSRP: $3.50