Riding An Ocean of Possibilities
Image Comics truly is the well of unique and innovate storytelling in the comic industry. It's chock full of very inventive series', and it's rarely a risk to jump onto a new Image title, hardly any Image comic on my pull list ever scores below a 4/5 at worst, if any. Great Pacific is a perfect example of the fresh ideas coming from arguably the biggest independent publisher around.
Let me get this out of the way first, I don't feel as though the art was as strong as it was the first issue. It's not bad at all, but characters' faces tend to feel a bit off compared to the first issue, but not to such a degree that it becomes a significant hinderance to the issue. I would also say that the cover spoils just a bit too much, it makes one of the later scenes slightly less effective.
But lets get back to that trademark Image innovation. Great Pacific is such a different kind of story, I'm still not entirely sure what the direction is, though I can tell it has one. Chas is a character who's hard to nail down. He seems to be somewhat heroic at times, fighting against the system, making use of tons of excess garbage, exposing illegal workings in his former company; but at the same time he's very selfish and whimsical. He just swoops in and takes over this trash island, and seems to have little regard for the worldwide repercussions, though he may have planned for them. His interactions with other characters in this issue paint him as somewhat aloof, lost in his own little world of discovery and victory, with very automatic responses to people trying to get him to act more responsibly. Chas really is a brilliantly complex character.
And it's not just the protagonist who catches you off guard, it's the entire story. There's some foreshadowing in this issue here and there, but I can almost guarantee nothing can prepare you for the wild escalation of events in the final scene. When everything appears to be heading one direction, something else crazy comes out of nowhere and takes over; and then the first big foreshadowed thing returns once you've forgotten about him because the other plotline took over. And actually, that sounds confusing but it honestly ties things together really smoothly.
In Conclusion: 4.5/5
Great Pacific is another worthy entry in the Image Comics gene pool. I honestly have absolutely no idea what direction this story is going for, but it's clear that there is one. It's the good kind of 'having no idea.' It's not that things are muddled and/or baffling, it's just that this is something so unique and well crafted that so much of it is a delight at the inability to predict the future of the series.
