Bianca enters the room holding a gun on Dy Dy. Dy Dy would have reason to feel more than a little persecuted by the situation. She’s not exactly in any position to try to escape from Bianca’s custody. It’s going to be something of a soul-searching conversation between a couple of people in a squalid building in Death of Copra #1. Writer/artist Michel Fiffe continues a long and winding sci-fi ensemble adventure drama. It’s a big mix of different elements in Fiffe’s dazzlingly distinctive art style. Major events pass as the pages turn in another fun issue.

Honestly, Dy Dy might by Dying. Bianca can’t really do anything about it. And she might not be in much of a position to care given all that’s happened and just what it is that’s going on in her mind. She’s got Dy Dy in her custody, but she’s also in her own kind of prison as things progress. It’s a pretty dark sort of a situation for everyone involved. Anger and frustration spills out in a number of different moments between various people in and around te orbit of the Copras. Overall volatility seems to increase and intensify. 

Fiffe runs the risk of overloading the issue with too many elements that don’t quite connect-up in any kind of a coherent or conceivable way. Not directly anyway. Every character in the book carries the burden of a tremendous amount of history that seems to be overpowering everything and none of it seems to be anywhere near any kind of resolution. It’s a big, hopeless mess on so many levels. Fiffe is exploring the darker end of human emotion from a number of different directions. It’s all quite impressive, but it’s kind of an emotionally exhausting read from cover to cover.

Fiffe’s layouts are really the single most impressive thing about the issue. There’s a deeply heartfelt and cunningly intellectual approach to overall page composition that can be jaw-droppingly impressive in places. The emotional expression of action on the page amplifies some very interesting moments here and there. As much as there is going on in the course of the issue, a few silent panels of one character leaving a room feels completely devastating...probably the single most impressive moment in the entire issue. And then there’s that moment between Bianca and Dy Dy at the beginning of the issue...the invisible prison between the two characters being expressed as a series of 9-panel pages. Remarkable stuff.

But it’s always been like this. The winding march of the Copra saga has been an engrossingly brutal slog through the darker end of human consciousness as the whole thing moves in such bewildering circles as characters slam into each other with gruff impact. The fact that Fiffe is able to move as quickly as he is with the narrative in spite of it all is actually a really impressive accomplishment in and of itself. As always...the saga continues.

Grade: A