Guest review by Matthew Lowder . . . . .
MIDNIGHT VISTA #1-5 (Aftershock Comics, 2019) Writer: Eliot Rahal. Artist: Clara Meath. Colors: Mark Englert. Letters: Taylor Esposito. Trade paperback published April 29, 2020. 3.5 stars out of a possible 5 stars.
This one is painful to write because the beginning had so much promise. I thought this would be a 4, but, alas.
This is a very unique and very personal story by author Eliot Rahal. Only in doing some research for this review did I discover this paranormal sci-fi series is based partially on the lived-experience of the author, who actually believes he had an alien encounter of some sort -- an inexplicable phenomena as a child wherein several hours of time were lost. Hmm...
Augmenting that in his mini-series entitled MIDNIGHT VISTA we have Oliver and his step-dad doing an evening run for some ice cream, and suddenly they are both abducted by page 4. On the very next page, 19 years have passed.
The 8-year-old is now a 27-year-old adult, naked, dropped right back on Midnight Vista, the name of the road where he grew up. He has no idea how much time has passed, and the town has all but thought any number of horrible fates had taken his life. He was the kid on the milk carton for years. His mother fell apart. The town speculated on who did it and why and where.
While Oliver came back and is on his own journey to expose the truth and find the aliens that did this to him, his stepdad is still missing, and never came back. Do the aliens still have him? Is he dead? Why did the aliens send back Oliver, and not the stepdad? Most of these questions have answers in MIDNIGHT VISTA.
The book explores youth, loss, relationships with parents, and agency over one's own life with deft writing, memorable characters, fun twists, dark humor, and a plot that moves briskly. I really didn't care for the art, so it should speak volumes that I enjoyed #1-3 enough to hunt down issues #4 and 5.
The book is good overall, but really didn't stick-the-landing, which is badly needed to to earn a 4+ from me. We're left with a lot of questions unanswered, and a rushed climax with a very abstract, left-field ending that left me unsure if I was missing some kind of profound message. I don't think I did. I can't say more without spoiling it. It's mildly incomplete.
If this is ever collected in a single volume and you come across it in a $5 bin, I think this is well worth your time, and is the best alien-abduction comic I've read to date. Granted, I've read one. Haha! But I repeat, like a good episode of X-Files and all the juicy government fallout that would come from an assumed-dead kid showing up years later unharmed in his home town, I was really entranced and enthralled with this book up to issue #5, despite the wonky art style. 3.5 stars out of a possible 5.
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