Misery #4 // Review
There’s a squad car at the corner of Broome and Thompson. Dispatch says that it’s a possible 146 involving an officer’s vehicle. Unit 47 rolls-in to check it out. The officer inside is injured. Bleeding. There’s a girl in there with the officer. She’s got a pulse, but they’re going to need to call an ambulance and this is only the beginning of Misery #4. Writer Todd McFarlane continues his supernatural crime drama with artist Szymon Kudranski. Color washes over the page courtesy of FCO Plascencia. There are moments the elevate a dreary drama that is brilliantly brought to the page by Kudranski.
The girl is brought to St. Vincent’s Hospital. The police would like a word with her. They tell the officers that that the girl is awake, but she’s confused. Questions should be kept to a minimum. They don’t care as long as she’s able to understand what they’re asking her. This is no casual stay in a hospital room for her. She’ll get visits from the police, a woman who wants to help, her uncle Al and a demon with glowing eyes. It’s okay...she’s getting use to that sort of thing. She DOES need to leave the hospital, though.
A narrative that’s set-up as a series of visitors in a hospital is actually a pretty cool idea that McFarlane totally fails to live-up to the full potential of. He DOES have a story to continue and certain plot elements to keep moving, though. So it’s totally understandable that he would be interested in maintaining the momentum of that. Certain elements of a narrative structured around a stay in the hospital don’t quite become fully realized as the overall momentum of the series needs to continue. It’s completely understandable. It’s just kind of disappointing.
Kudranski and Plascencia maintain a moody and resonant supernatural horror atmosphere that never feels like it’s straying too far from the mundane world of a hospital in New York. When the supernatural hits, it does so with a respectable amount of force that keeps the visual reality of the series grounded firmly in its own kind of chaos from beginning to end. There’s a hell of a lot of darkness and shadow for the fluorescently atiseptic atmosphere of a hospital, but the lack of realism in the lighting quality of a hospital room is small concession to an otherwise realistic portrayal of human emotion under the influence of otherworldly horror.
The dreariness of the drama really delivers on the mood. There’s an exhausted sort of a depth to it that feels restless around the edges. The issue seems to have captured quite a bit of the feel of an uneasy hospital stay. The full potential of a tightly-paced hospital drama may not have bee attained in the fourth issue of the series, but the momentum of the story is maintained as the series as the story somewhat strangely reaches the end of its arc with this issue.
Grade: B-
