Mind the Gap #15 – Review

By: Jim McCann (story), Rodin Esquejo & Dan McDaid (art), Jessica Kholinne & Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Elle Peterssen gets a bad case of comic book death.

The Review: When McCann first revealed to us the nature of Elle’s condition, I don’t think we ever appreciated how psychologically devastating it could be for her.  On paper, the idea that you can return from the dead sounds pretty good.  Hey—sign me up!  What we didn’t account for was the unpredictability of this deal.  Imagine knowing that at any second you can die for no reason whatsoever, only to come back and having to experience that fear again and again.

Well, that would be how most of us would experience it, I imagine.  Elle has a different angle on the situation.  It’s not the permanence of death she fears—obviously, since she seems to be pushing for it here.  The issue opens with Elle musing on the Arctic Woolly Bear Moth’s resurrection (so to speak) cycle and how it climaxes in metamorphosis, finally achieving the life it’s always meant to have.  Elle sees her own cycle of death as eroding not only her ability to live freely, but her identity also.

Mind the Gap #14 – Review

By: Jim McCann (story), Rodin Esquejo & Dan McDaid (art), Arif Prianto & Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Like the Duracell Bunny, Elle keeps on going and going and going and going…

The Review: When this story began with Elle in the Garden, your natural inclination was to believe that someone put her there on purpose.  But now that we’ve found out the true purpose of Jairus is to make her ripe for resurrection, all the creepy psychic powers she’s shown afterward appear to be an exciting bonus.  In that case, we have, as I noted last issue, some new questions about how Elle’s out-of-body abilities will tie into the plan to make her immortal.

While you hope that McCann will reveal a more specific purpose for the Garden in time, right now it serves as the sole means for Elle to resist her mother and grandfather’s plans.  If one thing has been made clear about Elle, she’s headstrong—literally and figuratively.  The way she ended up in this state to begin with was a result of her determination not to let Min and Erik have everything go their way, and she carries that determination to an extreme at the end of the issue.  It may not foil them completely, but it’s enough that she frustrate their masterwork.