- NO Place
- Ignition Press
- Written by Tim Seeley
- Illustrated and Colored by Stefano Simeone
- Lettered by Andworld Design
- Issues 1-4 available now
Mariposa Montiel is having a cruel homecoming.
Years after vanishing from her Chicago neighborhood, the teenage outcast has returned to a traumatized family and a media circus with nothing but a tiger-striped feather and an extraordinary tale of her time away as the champion of a magical jungle land called Mayahuela.
Back in reality, Mari is seen as a fraud, not a hero, and her story has made her an exile in her own life—until a secret organization with its finger on the pulse of so-called fictional worlds puts the fate of our own at her feet.
Secret organizations… Eldritch evils from beyond time and space… Legends, long thought mere fiction, stepping forward to hold the line… Ordinary people called to step forward when no one else can or will… These are elements that have become standards in stories of all genres and in every medium. Do you know why a fictional trope sticks around long enough to become a trope? Because it works.
In NO Place, writer Tim Seeley teams Dorothy Gale, savior/destroyer of Oz, with off-putting genius Allen Dion, and reluctant hero Mariposa to hold the line against the horrors of Insmouth. He’s combining the Land of Oz with Lovecraft’s signature brand of sanity-shattering terrors to very dark effect, and I like it. The characters are at odds with themselves and each other, but Seeley’s way of running broken people through the grinder and bringing them out the other side works.
Before I ever saw Seeley’s name, it was the art of Stefano Simeone on the cover that grabbed my attention. This is definitely going to be one of those times I lean back on the saying, “I don’t know art, but I know what I like,” since Simeone doesn’t have a typical style for comic books. As I try to come up with a word to describe it, kinetic keeps popping into my head. That pretty well sums it up, as the pages are buzzing with motion and traditional grid layouts are used sparingly. Adding to that, I have to point out Simeone’s attention to detail, which is insane.
Look at the following series of panels… This is Allen and Mari in a car. Take note of the random-looking patterns, reflections on the windshield changing from one panel to the next as they drive. There can’t be very many comic artists who would take the time and effort to add that tiny detail over the hard work they’d just put into their characters. Stefano Simeone did, and he’s a friggin champ for it.
Tim Seeley has a few solid home runs under his belt. Revival is a top-notch comic series that’s been adapted pretty successfully into a SyFy Channel series. Hack/Slash cracked open the mythology behind “slashers” like Jason, Michael, & Freddy & resulted in some outstanding stories. He’s written for major publishers on titles like Nightwing, Batman & Robin Eternal, Rogue: The Savage Land, and Vampire: the Masquerade. He has nothing to prove, and he doesn’t need me to champion his cause, but when I looked up online reviews for NO Place to see what others thought of it, I came across something that bugged me.
I’m not naming the outlet, but their review for this comic, which probably isn’t for everyone and may have some quirks that aren’t going to work for all readers, was demented. I kid you not, it was full of outright hate for the writing, the art, the comic as a whole. The reviewer said Simeone’s art “pissed” him off, and that he was determined to cost Ignition Press money by not carrying their titles in their comic shop. In my mind, that’s not a review. That’s someone taking their personal and emotional issues and trying to make themselves feel better by dragging someone else down.
Anyway, I’m enjoying the hell out of NO Place. I’ve picked up the first four issues, and I’m looking forward to the finale that’s been set up for issue five. If I didn’t like the book, you’d never hear a word about it out of me because there’s already too much of that out in the world. One person’s trash is someone else’s treasure.
Like what you like, and if you don’t like a thing, just move on.
Final Score: a spite-fueled 13/13 (realistically, call it a solid 11/13)
