Advance Review: There’s A Disconnect Between Text And Illustrations In ‘No/One’ #7
by Tom Smithyman
The ability to match text to illustrations in comic books is one of the most basic, yet critical, creative challenges. Most professionals are able to pull it off seemingly effortlessly. But when there’s a slip-up, the story suffers mightily while readers are left trying to put the disconnected pieces together.
No/One #7 suffers from this occasional disconnection. Artist Antonio Fuso fills in for series regular Geraldo Borges in this issue. It’s unclear whether this was a planned switch or came about and the last minute, though the website for publisher Image Comics still lists Borges, who draws the main cover, as the artist.
Fuso and writers Kyle Higgins and Brian Buccellato don’t seem to gel as well as Borges. For example, there are several abrupt, hard-to-follow jumps between panels. At one point, newspaper reporter Ajejandro Rios is reading a text, the next he’s in a car with the texter. A few panels later, he’s back on the street, but there’s no indications from the text about what’s happening or why.
Later, after an intense scene in which ex-cop Ben Kern confronts his son who may be the original killer, the location shifts to Ben’s house. Some of this abruptness is intentional and meant as a storytelling technique. But most of it comes off as a disconnection, leaving the reader to suffer.
Taken by itself, Fuso’s blocky style is hard to get used to. Perhaps if he had started with the first issue of the 10-part series, he would be a better fit. As it is, though, it feels incongruent and causes the reader even more confusion and frustration.
The story itself gets a bit more convoluted as Ben tries to figure out whether his son is responsible for a series of murders, or if an apparent copycat is actually the original murderer. Some interesting social commentary from past issues gets turned into a dragged-out sequence featuring a local senator and a highly opinionated TV talking head.
While this limited series has been fairly inconsistent, the disconnection between writers and the artists is a new issue. With only three chapters left, it will be interesting to see which gets resolved first: the disconnect or the murders.
No/One #7 is available for purchase today.
Overview
One of the most fundamental aspects of comics books is matching the words to the pictures (or vice versa). Occasionally in this issue, the two don’t mesh well — or the reader has to make some jumps of logic. That, combined with a ho-hum script, leads to some disappointment for the audience.
