Written by: Rick Remender
Art by: Jerome O’Pena & Matt Hollingsworth
Publisher: Image
In some ways, the fourth issue of Rick Remender and Jerome O’Pena’s Seven to Eternity is the perfect jumping on point.
And yeah, I totally get that that sounds like an odd thing to say. But kicking your plot into gear at the end of the third issue is kind of an odd decision on the part of the creative team, especially considering that, while I enjoyed the first three issues, it’s here that the book really starts to come out of its shell.
The opening salvo of Seven to Eternity was a bit of a whirlwind–the pacing was super quick, and just a ton of stuff happened. That’s an ineloquent, and somewhat reductive, way of phrasing that, to be sure, but in retrospect, it doesn’t actually feel all that important. Those issues were a showcase for just how fucking awesome Jerome O’Pena’s art (and Matt Hollingsworth’s colors) is.
Enough about that, though. In this issue, we get the curtains peeled back a bit and the pace slows way down. Honestly, it feels nice to put the brakes on, because it gives Remender time to flesh out the characters and the world they inhabit.
This is where my feelings about Seven to Eternity start to become a bit conflicted.
On the one hand, Rick Remender is great at what he does. I really like the world of Seven to Eternity, and he’s quite good at writing team dynamics. So, for me, there’s a lot to like about what he’s doing with this issue. It’s definitely the most personal issue thus far–there aren’t any of the big action sequences that have defined the rest of the series. The quiet moments give way to some nice character work.
On the other hand, goddamn is there a lot of exposition in this issue. The point I’m about to make is a more general one, but it definitely applies to this book. I’ve realized, over the last year, that no matter how interesting a world is, I will tune the fuck out if we get world building in the form of exposition dumps. There are better ways to convey information than just having a character sit around and explain it, regardless of the context.
That being said, I think Seven to Eternity #4 does offer up a bit of commentary on this. Just six pages later, the character guilty of delivering an exposition dump is killed, and rather violently. And again, I find myself kind of torn. Yes, that exposition dump was still taking up page space, and although it was somewhat interesting, I wasn’t really enjoying it. But killing this character off seems like Remender acknowledging the problem and sending a message to other writers.
Not that I think Rick Remender is going to go around smashing other writer’s faces in every time they write an exposition dump or maybe get a bit too heavy handed with their allegories. Regardless, this is an interesting point to ponder. I can’t say one way or another whether this was the intent, but y’know, death of the author and all that. This is how I read that sequence.
As I’ve referenced already, Jerome O’Pena is a stone cold master. And even though he doesn’t get to do the sweeping action scenes in this issue, he’s just as good at drawing the smaller moments. His facial expressions are especially valuable, conveying emotion that the writing doesn’t always get across.
Also, and I’ve talked about this before, but I absolutely love his character designs. He’s taken humanoid figures and warped them to the point of being almost unrecognizable. I expect there’s a reason for this (evoking a sense of discomfort, most likely), but the reason I bring it up is just because I think the cast looks pretty rad and I felt like pointing it out.
Seven to Eternity is a bit of a weird one. And not in the sense that subject matter is particularly odd–it’s just difficult for me to decide where I stand on it. For the time being, I’m putting myself in the camp of enjoying it. At worst, I think this book is pretty good. But it’s a bit of a bummer, because four issues in, it’s consistently felt like it’s on the verge of of being great. It just hasn’t quite gotten there for me.
