The reporter wakes-up in bed with a woman who is very attentive and affectionate. He’s not able to stick around in bed for long, though. He’s going to have to head off to work. He’s a reporter. He’s got to go report. Life isn’t terribly easy for him in Napalm Lullaby #7. Writer Rick Remender continues a story with artist Bengal. There’s some beautifully atmospheric moods being brought to page and panel in a chapter that feels deeply reflective and introspective as the series continues to move along reluctantly in the direction of some kind of listlessly uncertain destiny.
He’s meting a contact for coffee at a cafe. Nice place. He goes there every day. He knows everyone in the community. It’s a real community, too. Nice place. Everyone knows your name. Neighbors help each other out. He’s talking to his contact through a device that’s meant to muffle words into static. He says words are expensive. He says, “They’re erasing us. One at a time.” Then he vanishes in a splatter. A truck shows-up to get the reporter out of the area. They tell him that they can keep him safe. Things aren’t exactly going as planned in an idyllic domestic paradise.
Remender construct a perfect little diorama of a life for this reporter. Everything seems so peaceful. And there is a very natural progression to the story of that gradually gets more and more unraveled. Waking up in domestic and affection, and then moving onto fatherhood before moving out the door for a professional life. Then there's an interview. Some intrigue. The sequence and then things go just totally bonkers crazy. Each beat build on the beat before it to create a very sweeping momentum. That is actually really impressive. The tension increases with each page. It's a very cleverly-constructed seventh issue.
Bengal’s sharp sense of atmosphere gives the entire issue quite a bit of gravity. The script itself does a remarkable job of bringing across the intensity of the trauma. It would feel kind of weak were out for the fact that the artist is doing such a good job delivering everything to the page in a way that feels deeply organic. The architectural drawings the issue develop a beautiful sense of emersion in the story. Everything seems to be so well developed in a world that feels like it might as well have been around for over 100 years. It’s all a dream, though.
It's a remarkably well paste issue. Everything seems so perfectly balanced on so many different levels. It's all very well designed. There's so much going on that feels so very well constructed. It's actually not a bad issue to start this series. In fact, this might've been a better place for the series to start then whereRemender and company began it in issue #1. it's also beautifully constructed. Strange that it would end up being the seventh issue before it really felt like the series was totally coming together in a coherent fashion.
