Mind MGMT - you'll love it...because they'll make you

I usually stick to the cape and tights crowd in comic books. It's pretty rare that I meander too far into independent comic territory.

This month I'm glad I wandered because I read the first two volumes of Mind MGMT, a very surreal series about a super-secret agency tired to no government and populated by people with powerful mental abilities - telepathy, precognition, emotion manipulation, fault-seeing, and many more about which we learn over the course of these two volumes.

The story is engaging, revealed in very slow succession from the initial offerings of a reporter searching for answers to an entire flight of amnesiacs. Along her way the grains of sand add up to a shape that is only viewable from a distance on an ever-shifting foundation. Every fact along the way comes from an informant who might or might not be trustworthy, and the writer makes unique use of the format by adding in comments in each page's margins that put the facts into further question with each revelation. In the end, very little is for certain.

This has lead to closet industry of bloggers trying to ferret out the truth among the misdirections.

Each of the first two volumes ends with a partial conclusion, the first because the author wasn't sure that a second volume would be forthcoming, the second with a sense of finality that feels almost fully final - or at least would if I didn't know that there were already published subsequent issues.

The artwork also matches the story beautifully, with washed-out watercolors and dreamy, flowing lines breaking up the page, leaving us even on less sure footing of who is telling the truth every step of the way.

Check it out...