‘Christopher Chaos’ #4 Speaks To The Lost Kids We Were, Are, And Continue To Be

Welcome to the table,

In my experience, there is this thing you get told a lot when you are not like everything else around you. You get told to “be more normal.”

Now, this turn of phrase can come in a lot of ways. The core message is always the same. If You can just be more like everything else, what the person telling you deems to be correct, then you will be ‘better.’ It’s a dumb message and it should not be told but I would imagine that a large majority of people who are working through trying to figure out who they are in life have been told this, by someone they looked up to, a caregiver, or family member, more than once in their life.

Issue #4 of The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos tackles that moment in Christopher’s life, probably not the first, probably not the last, but for sure at a time when it impacts him and what is going on in his life in a big way.

That’s where this book keeps shining for me. The monster kids fighting the religious zealots in a wacky city made of strange tech and new-wave architecture is great. I want more of it every time I close the pages of these books, but the quiet downtime, the humanizing moments of these kids in while they are trying to figure themselves out are done in such a brilliant way that it’s hard not to have your heart break for them when they stress out and go through stuff.

The dialog is so natural in such a strange setting. I think the skillful work of the writer Tate Brombal is showcased in the ability of the characters to use profanity and not feel out of place or forced. Often in books with teen or youthful protagonists the injection of profanity into the dialog is a crutch that’s used by the writer to make the characters talking seem edgier but in the way it’s played out across these pages it just makes them sound like normal kids dealing with stressful situations.

We get more time with Abel, who clearly seems to be an analog for Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster, and there is a little more explored with the various organizations harrowing the kids who have been hunting monsters and shadow puppets the strings of power to the highest office in the land for what seems like quite some time now.

The team of Tate Brombal, Isaac Goodhart, Miquel Muerto, Aditya Bidikar, and James Tynion IV continue to produce a book I want to read even if it forces me to remember parts of my youth I would rather leave locked away or best forgotten.

This issue ends on a seriously high note even if it is a cliffhanger full of tensions and makes me really want to see what comes next. I feel like our motley crew of monsters is finally starting to mesh and whatever is about to be thrown at them is not ready for what these kids who always seem underestimated are going to bring.

Until next time, there are some absurdly great moments in this book that reference top surgery, self-hate, and shame. It’s done in a way that feels rooted in honest human experience. I’m not one who has experienced one of those three things but I can assure you that I felt every moment at that dinner table in the pit of my stomach. The conversation on the couch with Christopher cut like a knife I can never escape. The hanging up of the phone call mirrors things I went through this week that I have been plagued with all my life.

The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos feels like it understands what it is to be the “weird kid” and how hard the moments that no one writes about are to survive. It’s not the monsters that hurt you, it’s the people you need to love you the most that do the most damage and this book gets that. I would recommend this comic to anyone who is feeling lost because if nothing else it shows we are not alone and just how powerful we can be when we come together.

Be kind to each other.