Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Matt Kindt
Artist: Matt Kindt
Colourist: Matt Kindt
Release date: May 13, 2015
Price: $3.99

Critically praised Matt Kindt’s comic book MIND MGMT is, in a word, ugly. The art is ugly, the world it presents is ugly, the government is ugly and MIND MGMT is full to the brim of ugly characters doing ugly things.

The eponym of the title turns out to be a government spy agency utilizing psychics for it’s own nefarious needs. It all goes decidedly pear-shaped when a retired agent loses control of those psychics, causing a town’s inhabitants to murder each other (something a villain attempted on a global scale in Mark Millar’s Secret Service). The responsible agent decides to bring the agency down. And all it took was mass murder to see the error his ways. Which makes it hard, on the reader, to have sympathy for a character like that. But may be he does watercolours in his spare time, loves his pet dogs, who knows? Or, necessarily, cares?

The scripting comes across as uneven. The concept has merit and the plot works, it is just the follow-through which falls into the realms of merely adequate. One can see thought was put into character names; Henry Lyme is a reference to The Third Man’s Harry Lyme.

There even less thought put into the dialogue; it is serviceable, but some opportunities for intelligent writing, lyrical phrasing and poetry, where appropriate, are ignored or missed. “His relationship with guns was transcendent,” a passage, describes one character. “He would often talk about his relationship with his personal arsenal, as if it were a collection of living human beings.” Aside from being repetitive, the writer fails to show the reader, instead of tell the reader. Joseph Conrad-level writing isn’t required, but a thoughtful metaphor or two would be very welcome in MIND MGMT.

That said, there are some good moments, when a character confronts her own demon before the government can use it to destroy her. But moments like these are few and far between. Fundamentally, MIND MGMT is let down by the artwork, which seems to enjoy working against the reader so much, it is hard not to put the magazine down after the first two pages. The writing deserves a better environment than this.

In many ways, this is a comic book best seen on radio.

Reviewer: Joe Lovece
Review Editor: Steve Hooker