The Gemini Complex
We learn what happened to Jun the night he tried to escape and the sordid history of Jun and his twin brother Hisao.
The Good
To this point in the series Jun's been the biggest enigma out of all of the Glories, so I'm glad to get a little insight into the guy. The peeks into his childhood and his relationship with his brother really helps to offset their interaction in the present. Throughout the issue Spencer plays with duality and parallels and it's really subtle.
This issue is simple and straightforward at a first glance but once you catch what Spencer's doing you'll see it in a whole new light. I must admit that it took me about four reads to fully appreciate it and even then it took my good buddy Silkcuts to point out a thing or two out to me. As a psych major I must admit my shame for not catching the B.F. Skinner references. Spencer does a superb and very subtle job of exploring Skinner's theory of hard behaviorism. The way he writes Hisao perfectly reflects the power and potential of mind control and behavior modification. And once you take it all in it really is chilling and makes the academy all the more disturbing.
This isn't the first time that parents have been killed in this series, but something about the way that Gribbs beats Jun & Hisao's mother to death really hit me. I don't know if it's because it's a man assaulting a woman who clearly can't defend herself, or the fact that it happens off panel while Ms. Daramount is characteristically nonchalant about the terror unfolding before her. maybe it's a combination of the two, that and we see the end result of her bludgeoning.
Villains should be threatening and sinister. Maybe it's their attire or formal Speech but until this issue it never really hit me just exactly how vile and disturbed the staff of the institute are (well not so much for Gribbs). You'd think that murdering a boy's mother and kidnapping his brother, and only living relative was enough. But not for these two, they go that extra mile with their evil.
Jun mention's something about hearing Ms. Daramount say some weird stuff about plans for the boys. This leads me to believe that he may be a lot more important to the plot than we've been lead to believe. And the end of the issue leads me to think that he just may be the Glory most in the know about the institutions goals.
There's a very understated, but nice dedication to artist Joe Eisma's recently deceased father
The Bad
Initially I thought that this was the most straightforward issue of the series so far, but after further analysis it's quit possibly the most dense to date. As always it answers questions, but opens up 10 new ones. And you'll definitely want to be familiar with past issues, especially #1 to get all you can out of this one. So yeah, you'll need to do some homework here.
Eisma reuses some art from a prior issue in the beginning of the issue.
The Verdict
Buy This Comic!!!
It's a quick read and simple at a glance, but once you stop and really look around you'll notice all kinds of things in this issue that escaped your eye. Read, reread, contemplate, repeat. Spencer's not just making better comics, he's trying to make better readers.
