Okay… holy shit. I can barely tell you anything about Slab because there’s a crazy reveal on the first page. To give some context, there’s an outside party that knows what’s going on and may have had a hand in it. Which means that a lot of things are all coming into play at once because we’ve seen in other series how other parties have had a hand in the events happening in Pennsylvania. To give you a hint… it involves the invisible people. Trust me, even saying that isn’t tell you jack. As for the rest of Slab, the part I can talk about involves Dr. Grimes and Dr. Kifo as they test cures on dogs. There's a lot of dark humor. The news is still following them and Grimes is still hilarious with his short and dismissive answers. The news desk also continues to add humor as they direct from a far and we’re given a behind the scenes look at how they’re handling this story.
Whether you’re reading just this series or the entire line of Double Take books, this issue of Slab is incredibly important to both the series and the universe. It’s the first big puzzle piece being set down before us and connecting other pieces. I wish that I could tell you more about it, but you really should go in without any other knowledge.
The writing evolves in this issue. It still maintains the humor, character development and the presentation that the previous two issues have, but with the new story element you can really see the dialogue advance and become a bigger part of the story. A lot of the books rely on the visuals to do a lot of the heavy lifting, but because we have this new mystery element we’re left in the dark some. The writing keeps us from bumping into walls and pushes the story onwards.
There’s four artists on the layouts and pencils and they do a fairly decent job of keeping the book looking consistent. There’s still some parts in which their individual styles bleed out though and I actually liked those parts the best. Each artist does handle their part of the story well though and it’s broken up to where there’s a scene change when the art changes so it’s not as obvious. That and none of the styles are bad so there’s really nothing disappointing about the art in this issue.
This is definitely the book I want to talk about more. There is a slow part in the middle of the book that hangs out too much, but overall this is a great issue of Slab. It reveals a much bigger part of the plot and that’s welcomed considering how many moving parts there are in this series and the other titles. If for some crazy reason you’re only going to read one Double Take title this week, make it Slab.
Score: 4/5
Slab #3 – “Bare Bones” Story: Bill Jemas, Michael Coast Script: Michael Coast, Brian Finkelstein, Matthew Dicks, Bill Jemas Layouts & Pencils: Julian Rowe, Joseph Cooper, Young Heller, Stan Chou Publisher: Double Take Comics Price: $2.50 Release Date: 2/24/16 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital