Review: Retcon #4

December 20, 2017

By Jonathan Edwards

Retcon is shit. It’s always been shit. There was zero chance this finale was going to be anything but shit. But, that makes it no less of an infuriating endeavor to read. Frankly, even with only four issues, this book has no business being a monthly series. Waiting until the third issue to start touching upon the marketed premise is entirely too long in any scenario, but here, where that also amounts to over half of the series, that’s unacceptable. They might’ve been able to get away with it if this had been published as an OGN, but that still wouldn’t fix the bigger, more foundational problems. Namely, Retcon doesn’t do anything with its eponymous concept. Yes, it’s about a repeating timeline, but unlike, say, Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, the “Mystery Spot” episode of Supernatural or pretty much any other story that also does that, we only get to see the events of a single repetition play out. As such, the already shallow characters get little to no genuine development, and we effectively can’t understand what makes the current repetition different, let alone the significance of that difference, if we don’t see at least some of the other repetitions as well. Sure, they kind of try to explain what’s changed, but there’s no satisfaction in that. Time loop narratives just don’t work when you don’t show the fucking time loops.

Review: Retcon #3

November 15, 2017

By Jonathan Edwards

God this book sucks. So hard. This issue finally touches on the “retcon” premise this book, and it makes something clear. You absolutely have to go into this book knowing the premise for it to make any semblance of sense. Otherwise, you’ll hit the third issue, and the resetting time concept will come completely out of left field (and, not in a good way). But despite all that, the premise also isn’t wholly accurate. Retcon isn’t so much the “reboot of a comic book miniseries that has never existed” as it is the events right before said reboot has always happened in the previous iterations of this universe. Of course, it’s possible that time is meant to always reset to the first panel of the first page of the first issue, but the exposition here suggests it goes back much further than that. And when I say exposition, I mean there’s a lot of it. In fact, Retcon #3 is practically nothing but exposition. Too bad none of it has any emotional impact since it’s trying to make a point of how “different it is this time,” but we never saw any of the previous attempts, so that doesn’t end up meaning much if anything.

Review: Retcon #2

October 11, 2017

By Jonathan Edwards

I don’t understand this book. I was hoping this second issue would help it more closely resemble Image’s summary for the series, but it didn’t. Instead, it just doubles down on the half-baked conspiracy premise, and it tries hard to show just how edgy and satirical it is. Except, rather than actually being either of those things, it’s just assholes being assholes to one another for twenty-some pages, and we’re left with little to no character development or plot progression.