Publisher: Boom Comics
Writers: Curt Pires
Artist: David Rubín
Colourist: Michael Garland
Release date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99

The Fiction does not just break the fourth wall it obliterates it.

Four 10-year-olds discover magic books, which pull the children into a fictional universe. Eventually, the four leave childhood diversions behind and grow up. But when one of them disappears the remaining friends re-enter the fictional space of the magic books to search for their friend. However, what they discover is not what they expected to find.

The Fiction’s seemingly simple conceit is anything but. Writer Curt Pires handles the complicated plot with style and grace. In Pires’ hands The Fiction is an adventure story with very little traditional action, just an engrossment that stalks the reader with creepy ease.

‘It’s like there’s nothing and everything inside it – (the books) – all at once. Just colliding,’ one of the children remarks, looking through the pages of one of the book. When a book suddenly reappears in front of one of the kids now grown up; the text between the panels reminds the reader, ‘The black gravity of the past has a way of catching up with us no matter how far we run.’

Rubín’s art is reminiscent of artists Charles Burns and Matt Madden. His artwork is not highly detailed but stylish. And when the scene shifts from our plane of existence, Rubín’s artwork gets surreal too. The mysterious entity on the cover and the epilog is a completely original design, sort of an anthropomorphic plant with a tail.

The Fiction flies off the starting blocks like a sure firer winner!

 

Reviewer: Joe Lovece
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker