Review – Cave Carson Has An Interstellar Eye #1 (DC Comics)

Publisher: DC Comics (Young Animal Imprint)
Writer: John Rivera
Artwork: Michael Avon Oeming
Release Date: 21st March 2018

I can’t really stress how much I disliked reading this, for quite a variety of different reasons.

DC is doing all sorts of brave and ambitious things lately, and the Young Animal imprint has brought some truly extraordinary talent and ideas out there – Eternity Girl leapt off the page last week, hugely exciting for a comic I knew next to nothing about, for example. Sure, there are some wobbles, but the Rebirth era has brought an awful lot of interesting titles to bear.

Cave Carson isn’t one of them.

It’s a misnomer, first of all. It’s not an issue #1, which is part of the problem. If you haven’t read Cave Carson has a bionic eye, you will be completely and utterly bewildered. Not just by its inter-dimensional psychedelia (and to be clear, I rather like Oeming’s head-bending artwork, especially the cover), but by a largely nonsensical plot filled with characters I am supposed to care about.

The plot, such as it is, involving a thinly veiled Prince caricature who is literally a dying Star is fairly uninteresting; I simply have no investment in Cave or his daughter.

Which brings me back to my main problem: the lack of world-building. DC loves an inter-dimensional romp: Motherlands is ace, funny and clearly conceived; Doom Patrol is beyond crazy, yet both brilliant and, for all its weirdness, totally accessible to the novice. Cave Carson is none of these, and I’ve dipped into the previous arc.

I want to be immersed in a world, and need a frame of reference. But, to me, there’s none of this, and I’m left utterly lost (and rather irritated) by the end of the issue.

I can’t help but feel there was a reason this comic’s already been cancelled once.

Rating: 1/5.

PREVIEW ARTWORK
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