Mind the Gap #5 – Review

By: Jim McCann (story), Rodin Esquejo & Adrian Alphona (art), Sonia Oback & Beny Maulana (colors)

The Story: When your dad says he’ll always be watching over you, he probably doesn’t mean it this way.

The Review: I don’t consider myself an elitist where comics are concerned.  I’m perfectly happy to indulge in the frequently mindless extravagance and spectacle of superheroes, even when they don’t have much in the way of literary merit.  Sometimes, though, it’s a relief to take a break from the “catch the villain”/“save the world” bit in favor of some real, down-to-earth stories.  The stakes may be smaller, but they have much more weight.

So after a few days of magic-slinging men in trenchcoats and lost kingdoms under the sea, I was very happy to sit down to the grounded drama of a guy trying to escape his roots.  I have to say, the drunk father has become sort of a cliché villain in a lot of stories—the contemporary version of the evil stepmother—but more than abusively inebriated, Dane Miller’s dad is downright malicious.  He actively seeks revenge against his son; he gives no special consideration to his relationship with Dane, so he comes across as particularly easy to hate.