Thursday, March 3, 2016

The Discipline #1



The Discipline, Issue #1 is about Melissa, a bespeckled and spectacled housewife who hasn't had sex in four years.  Her husband is obscenely rich, her family equally poor.  She goes to the museum every week to stare at Goya's Venus and the Satyr.  One week, Orlando shows up and tells her to meet him in two days.  She does.  He takes her to (**TRIGGER WARNING**) a slaughterhouse where upon seeing a dead bull hanging from a chain, she sees a vision of herself, dead and hanging from a chain.  She passes out.

The Discipline isn't for everyone, but I like it.  The artist is Leonardo Fernandez.  I appreciated the facial expressions of the main character, Melissa.  He's also good at detailing wealth.  Sure, books like 50 Shades of Grey get written off - and rightly so - but when a writer can faithfully describe true wealth, he or she really has something.  The colors are by Cris Peter, who I noticed for using different colors for Melissa's hair, depending upon the light and the time of day.  A lazier colorist would have used the same orange throughout the issue.  The letters are by Simon Bowland, one of my favorites in the genre.

What makes The Discipline such a strong title is how it leaves a lot open to interpretation.  Does Melissa become a monster?  What is the Discipline?  How do they get their money?  I found myself basically reading this title twice just to soak in the atmosphere and try to understand more about what's going on.

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