After a decent start that reminded me a lot IDW’s old Silent Hill comic books, The Evil Within takes an unfortunate turn. It’s not a bad issue, but it is pretty much everything you’d expect to happen after the first issue. There are some intense scenes, but a lot of the, “holy shit what’s going on?” has been lost. The second issue is entitled “Ghost Town” and that’s exactly where we find our two characters from the first issue, in a ghost town. Our young woman who we started with gets a bit of strangeness when she discovers the missing person flyers she was on her way to post, already hanging up in the deserted town. We also learn that the person she’s with doesn’t remember how he got to where he was; his account becomes a familiar one, but the gist is that he fell asleep and woke up somewhere else. He’s also crazy so I don’t trust him and I don’t think Dana should either.
They run into two more people, a woman dressed like a flight attendant and man in military fatigues. They form a group and head towards the only thing in town that seems to have power. Ruth the flight attendant is actually from the town, but hasn’t been back in a long time. Her knowledge proves useful, but the town seems anxious to get rid of her.
This is a character driven issue which would have been great but the characters are one-dimensional. We learn a little about Dana, but it’s really not enough. We learn the most about Ruth and it’s actually the best part of the comic, but when it’s over she reverts back to being one-dimensional like the others.
The dialogue isn’t helping the story; I’m interesting in the story and what’s going down, but the characters were at times too video gamey. I felt like I was the main character and had walked up to each character and initiated a dialogue tree. In a video game they can get away with that because there’s only one person talking and moving the story along, but in a comic everyone can interact. It was kind of strange reading something like that because again I felt like I was in a video game due to the excessive exposition.
The art is good for the most part. Alex Sanchez excels during the horror and action scenes, but when the characters are just standing around he tends to struggle. One panel with Ruth made her nose look broken and huge, but then another panel with a profile showed her to be rather pretty. There’s also a lot of fine details missing during these scenes, but during the action… man oh man does the book look good. Hopefully the series realizes what it’s good at and attempts to fill the issue with more of that rather than boring dialogue that I’m struggling to say has a purpose.
Overall it’s still an entertaining issue, but it struggles a lot. Granted there was no way the second issue could be the first because the story must continue, but it stumbles to figure out what it is. An extension of the game? Scenes pulled from the game? A character driven story? It could be all that, but it really needs to lock it down and deliver on one or all of them. For now it’s still a fun read.
Score: 3/5
Writer: Ian Edginton Artist: Alex Sanchez Publisher: Titan Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 11/5/14 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital