Narcopolis Review

CatFang · Narcopolis Review

I am big fan of Jamie Delano.

For me he is the best western writer of horror comics going, and his A-grade work has a dark nastiness that is peculiarly British in some way.
His command of atmosphere and implication is masterful and he has created stories that continue to scratch around your brain for years after you read them. I still have some in there now.

When BatManuel posted that he had a new book coming out, then, it went straight on my list.

I picked it up on Saturday. It's Monday and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about it.

It is not really the book I was looking forward to, so at first I felt a bit annoyed and cheated by it - but that is not its fault. I was expecting more of a horror story, and the book is (or appears from issue 1) to be much more classic dystopian sci-fi.

Dystopian sci-fi is not really something I am a great fan of in general - to me it always seems to turn out the same way, pretty much, but then one of the reasons I like Jamie Delano is his skill at twisting things up into new and unexpected shapes - so we shall see.

I am hoping it will get darker - but again, that's not really fair on it. Maybe Delano is bored of writing "dark and creepy" now and wants to try other things so I shouldn't "typecast" him and then be disappointed when I don't get the thing I just made up in my head!

So, the review proper:

The setting / tone of the book reminds me most of Brave New World.
There is the "shiny utopian" feel of the city (country?) of Narcopolis itself contrasted with the ravaged and primitive outlands and their apparently savage inhabitants. Flashes into the darker side of how this "perfect society" is maintained are there from the very beginning , both explicitly through what is shown and implicitly through how things are said, and this brings me on the main issue with the book - the dialogue.

In order to convey certain elements of the society Delano has invented a kind of NewSpeak, and for me, it didn't quite come off. Less of it would have worked better - think.I like the idea of the language. Much of it is twee and horribly sugary and has just the kind of words you would expect a government committee to come up with, and impose, in order to make their citizens sound happy. I took it as a kind of riff on "political correctness gone mad" and I like the idea of attempted control of society through language - as been attempted in the real world in the past by totalitarian regimes (or even some a bit closer to home!)

But it hasn't really worked and I think the reasons are inherent in comics, rather than a flaw in the idea. Let me explain a bit more. Where you have a novel the length of A Clockwork Orange or 1984 or a couple of hours of film, as in something like Zardoz, you have enough space to introduce new elements of language without it being overpowering. In a speech balloon of a handful of words there is so much vocabulary to get across that it kind of smacks you in the face and distracts from the story.

The new words are all contextual - so there is not any confusion about what is being conveyed / communicated and there is no need for a glossary as I have seen requested elsewhere- but it becomes a bit comic / irritating depending on what you think of it. By the end of the book it was reminding me more of a parody of the great utopian / dystopia works, rather than standing alongside them (a bit like the comedy"future nice" world in Demolition Man if you have seen that.)

I think maybe there was an attempt to introduce too much about the setting, and too many potential directions (which I can't list without spoilers) thrown in, for the first issue, and so I did not form an emotional attachment to any of the characters. Perhaps a bit more of getting the main character's story going, or more character development would have worked better for me. Then details about the world could just be drip-fed in unobtrusively.I remember that I might have thought something similar (although not to such an extreme) about Outlaw Nation at the first issue - and I ended up loving that.

The art is pretty - kind of Chris Weston / Gary Erskine - ish but not quite as fluid. I imagine it will become more confident as the artist gets to know the characters better as often happens. One of my main questions is whether the tree of life tattoo on Gray Neighbour (the main character's) stomach is relevant / symbolic or just decoration applied by the artist.

It seems that the story is going to share themes / concerns with lots of things Grant Morrison / Warren Ellis write have written about. It also seems that it is going to become overtly political so it may not last the course!

As I have been writing this I realise that I did like it more than I thought when I closed the book. I'm going to keep getting it to see where it goes.
It will probably suffer in reviews in comparison to things like the wild ride that is Doktor Sleepless - but the more I think about it the more I think such comparisons are only cosmetic similarities in the setting.

So this probably reads like a bit of a confused and troubled review. If it does that is because I am a bit confused and troubled by the book itself - both narratively and structurally. I'm hoping that turns out to be a good thing and the team is able to build that up into something truly unsettling and dissonant at the heart of the world and the story, rather than something that gets in its way.

The demands the book places on the reader are high for a first issue - and if I didn't already know what Delano is capable of pulling off I may not have been prepared to make that kind of investment in it. As it is I award it the following scores:

Story this issue 5/10
Art 7/10
Overall 6/10

However I am giving it a "development potential" score of 8.5/10 (mixing fractions and decimals - tut!) due to it being Jamie Delano. I guess it has my attention til about issue 3 to prove me right.

Visit the Whatever Comics main website and online shop to buy in person, by phone or online

Batmanuel

Excellent review, and most if not all of it i wholeheartedly agree with, i knew when i gave you this and said let me know what you think that the assessment would not only be accurate but entertaining.
and to all intents i feel pretty much the same about the book, knowing what Jamie DeLano is capable of, this book left me feeling, well like you said, cheated. still we shall see. lets hope the next issue makes us more happychat Sad

CatFang

CatFang

So, after all this time I have read issue 2.

It is very good and I am definitely waiting hungrily for the next one.

The main characters have come up to the fore and there are some intriguing directions set up.

There is (or seems to be) less of the NewSpeak style dialogue (it could be that I noticed it less, less could have been put in, or it could have been revised in light of what seemed to be a common opinion about the last one) and the story looks to have swung into a good rhythm.

Recommend that you pick it up for a read, but know what you are going to get with issue one and stick with it.

Batmanuel

Issue two certainly had a better flow than the first issue,
and i agree that the Happychat seems much less intrusive.
Now is thats because,

1. We now have learnt to speak the language
2. It was used less than the first issue

Either way i look forward to the next issue too. Smile

CatFang

Does anyone know if Narcopolis is ending soon?

I can't help but notice at the end of the last issue I have (issue 3, I think) the end caption says: "To be concluded". Does this mean the arc or the book?

I hope the arc as it is just getting going now.

Batmanuel

It seems that issue four was indeed solicited as 4 of 4, and no new or second issue has yet been listed.
which is a real shame, because after reading issue three the series really has come to life, i am almost afraid to read issue four in case its a complete cop out like the last Ellis Thunderbolts.
i will let you know in due course.

Batmanuel

As Narcopolis saga draws to what feels like a premature ending, our favorite Well Mannered Boy offers a review and overview...
Check it out here