Darren
“The faces of the mannequin children”
- It’s funny, at first I thought this was an effective description of their expressionless faces...
“Joe jolts up from his seat, gazes over the
plastic, expressionless faces of his classmates”
“she is a splitting image of a
department store mannequin.”
- Then I realized it was for real..or fake as the case may be
“closer to the Alex mannequin”
- A small thing but maybe capitalize “Alex” as it’s our first time meeting him. He’s introduced here as if we should know him already.
I’m liking Joe’s “fu?k you” attitude now that everyone has become mannequins. I’m presuming he’s been bullied or shunned by his peers so it’s funny to see him relishing this experience. His antics with the gum on the Alex mannequin was particularly satisfying in an unashamedly, vindictive way.
PLATINUM PHANTOM
That document opens a dimensional
portal between two dimensions.
- I wonder could you just call it a “portal’ and drop dimensional? It feels redundant when you go to specify “between two dimensions”
JOE
Think I have enough.
“Plops in the coins, makes a selection.”
- I got a chuckle out of this naïve diversion from Joe. He’s just a kid after all who’s thirsty.
JOE
If it was the end of the world,
wouldn’t you just want to have a
root beer?
- Ha, fair point.
I was digging this up until the last page when, to quote Platinum Phantom…
PLATINUM PHANTOM
You lost me kid.
Or more accurately...”You sort of lost me kid”...It seems that Joe thinks he has gone into Platinum Phantom’s world not the other way around on the basis that he is the only one inexplicably unaffected by Psychobrain’s dummy army. I mean, that’s a hell of an assumption to make.
I know the comic shows that both dimensions are identical, seemingly carbon copies of one another but how is Joe so sure that Platinum Phantom hasn’t met Psychobrain yet either? How does Platinum Phantom know about Psychobrain then? How comes Platinum Phantom didn’t know he hadn’t left his own world? If we are in Platinum Phantom’s world wouldn’t there be more of a chance he would/will have encountered Psychobrain already?
Plus, how did Joe understand all this? He comes to these conclusions without even looking at the comic since page 2. Are you suggesting that he knew what was going on from this point onwards because the comic was depicting his experiences as they happened?
Yeah, I know, I’m probably taking all of this way too seriously. It’s just I was a little confused by all these reveals and assumptions loaded on at the end that I had to process and question them.
So while I essentially got what was going on since Joe literally talks us through it, I think my problem in those last pages and the reason why it was hard to go along with the kid’s sudden revelations primarily lies in the fact that we never get a glimpse of the comic book ourselves when he shows it to Platinum Phantom, as this appears to be where the answers lie.
All we get are reactionary shots as Platinum Phantom reads it and realizes what has happened. Seems a missed opportunity not to show the comic book reflecting what is actually going on; the comic showing Phantom Platinum reading the comic, showing Platinum Phantom reading the comic, etc.
Reading back over the script, perhaps I should’ve copped that Joe was in the comic book world rather than the other way around since the comic featured Joe and his actions as they concurred. Maybe I was thrown by the delay in which this is revealed. As I said above, it appears Joe must’ve known what was really going on from that moment in page 2 when he sees himself in the comic but decided to string Platinum Phantom along for a page or two just for kicks
.
Anyway, I still enjoyed the imagination going on here, some nice touches of humour too.
Col.