Lady Mechanika: The Devil in the Lake #3
The legend the locals tell is that of the dragon by the lake. There’s someone who has come to investigate these legends. Any excursion into the icy waters of a lake in winer is going to run into problems that DON’T involve some kind of mythical monster. The investigator is going to meet with further problems in her exploration as her current story begins to draw to a close in Lady Mechanika: The Devil in the Lake #3. The writing team of Joe Benitez and M.M. Chen usher the Lady through her penultimate issue with the aid of artist Siya Oum. Atmosphere is brought to the page by the coloring team of Mike Garcia, Beth Sotello and Sabine Rich.
She's going into hunt a dragon which the erratically isn't even there. But she's pretty heavily armed. There's a good chance that she's not going to run into anything. But in case she is, she wants to be more than prepared. She is, however, going in alone. Just going into the depth like that is dangerous enough for anyone. It's a tiny boat. Just enough for her and a couple of other people. In the process of crossing the lake, however, they find another boat. Much bigger. Much worse shape. Before she can explore the deaths, she's going to have to explore what happened to the other boat.
Benitez and Chen put a lot of edges an and around everything. Not all of it seems terribly interesting. Some of it seems to be bogging down the rhythm and movements and motions of the story. That being said, there is a solid towards the action issues end. Quite a bit of tension is built in and around the dialogue as the heroine gets closer and closer to her her destiny. It's a nice ping. It just feels kind of slow. The dialogue seems very sharp. Very crisp. Very well executed. It just has a tendency to make things go a little bit slower than they probably should.
To the visuals that feels exquisitely atmospheric. The coloring team has done a brilliant job of delivering the chill to the page. Drama is rendered with impressive complexity in the faces of the characters as well as tone, posture and the framing of the action. The tight close-ups and claustrophobic feel of some of the earlier pages make things that much more explosive when the action hits at issue’s end. Everything works splendidly in the visual.
The climax of the issue hits like a hammer. It makes the eventual conclusion next issue seem a bit strange. Precisely how that last issue was going to get paste is going to be interesting to see given how everything had been going over the course of the first five issues. This is a talented, creative team, though. There's no question that they'll be able to pull off any issue that won't feel at all padded out in any way. These people know what they're doing. They just seems kind of strange to think that there could be another 20 to 30 pages of this given what’s happened at the end of the issue.
