Blast 1: Dead Weight - Manu Larcenet
What is the Blast? Well, you’re not going to get all the answers in this first volume of Manu Larcenet’s series, even though it runs to some 200 pages, but Larcenet’s scratchy expressionistic black-and-white artwork has many other attractions. It will take another 600 ages in three more volumes to get to the meaning of the strange life-changing event that Polza Mancini experiences, but what we do know fairly quickly is that it has led to him being held in police custody and investigated for what he did to Carol Oakley, a woman who is currently in an induced coma and on a ventilator in hospital. Polza’s story has many unusual twists, absurdities and horrors to go through before we get any closer to understanding the nature of the Blast, and Larcenet’s pacing and visual depictions of the journey make that a compellingly dark and intriguing story. The police already know what Polza did to Carol Oakley, and Polza isn’t denying it, but what the police commissioner wants to know is why. 38 y...