White People Problems: Mind The Gap #1 Review

I’ve read Mind The Gap #1 three times now, and I don’t yet know how I feel about it. From one angle, it’s a story populated by either thoroughly unlikeable rich-folk or entitled hipster children of privilege, with the only middle ground between the two occupied, literally, by the hired help. From another angle, it’s a competent whodunit with a dozen suspects, a solidly-plotted attention to detail, and a supernatural hook, albeit one that immediately made me think, “Huh… this guy’s read Midnight Nation.”

I’ll start with the single undeniable positive about this comic book: you get one hell of a lot of story for your money. This book is 46 pages of advertisement-free story for $2.99. And those pages introduce no less than twelve primary characters, establish that almost any of the eleven who aren’t the protagonist – slash – victim are possible suspects, and reinforces that if any of them winds up being the assailant and gets the needle for it, the only tragedy will be that the other ten will be allowed to live.

Seriously: these people suck just that much.

The nuts and bolts of the story are that a girl named Elle gets tuned up in a New York subway station and left in a coma by parties unknown. In the wake of the attack, we meet Elle’s mother Min, described as a “tiger mother,” probably because “wealthy cunt” would punt the book’s Teen Plus rating. We are also introduced to her vapid brother Edward, who makes A.J. Soprano look like Abraham Fucking Lincoln, as well as friends Dane and Jo, who work in the theater, use terms of endearment “our girl” and “Peanut,” and talk about long days watching Marilyn Monroe marathons in their sweatpants and other irritating foibles that would make you change your phone number if you even suspected that they might have it.

Writer Jim McCann is walking a dangerous line here, in that based on the characterizations of nearly every human being surrounding Elle, I kind of wanted something bad to happen to them. It’s like seeing a tragedy befall one of the Kardashians; you don’t want to wish ill on a fellow human being… but when it comes to these types of entitled, self-absorbed rich kids and their friends, “fellow human being” is arguably being hugely charitable. Now granted, we can’t really say if, in Elle, the apple has fallen far from the tree or not because she’s in a coma… however, being a comic book, that doesn’t prevent McCann from giving her a characterization. Because coma or not, she’s still walking around.

The supernatural hook in this story is that comatose Elle is wandering around some shadow world, interacting with other people apparently in comas, including Blake Robert Plangman, “Bobby” to his friends, and “Millennial John Constantine knockoff” to his readers. However, McCann writes the experience as making Elle mute to start, and with no memory of who she was or where she came from. Meaning that we have a protagonist who is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, and surrounded by real douchebags.

So while Elle might turn out to be a relatable and sympathetic character in whose fate it is worth investing, it is simply too early to tell if that is the case, or even if that will be enough to overcome the generally loathsome supporting characters.

Where this book works is in the plotting. McCann clearly has spent a ton of time working out the gears behind the story, to the point where several clocks are shown early in the story to establish a timeframe to indicate who might be a potential suspect (I’m not that observant a reader; McCann explained the clock gimmick in the backmatter). We’re shown characters with props and / or surrounding bits of business that point to them as potential attackers, and we are assured that the perp is one of the scumsuckers who we have met in this issue. So for a mystery nut, there will be red meat here for you. The question will be whether the plot is enough to turn away from the awful people driving it.

And one sidenote taking away from the plotting: it seemed pretty obvious to me that Constantine-Lite will wind up being a key for Elle solving the mystery from beyond the coma. Beyond the distraction that the character seemed dangerously similar to that of Laurel, the character that came from nowhere to guide David Grey around his out of body experience walk in Midnight Nation, that weirdly specific name – Blake Robert Plangman, with the emphasized note that he prefers “the more pedestrian ‘Bobby'” – will wind up being an anagram or a reference or some damn thing that winds up being Elle’s subconscious key toward figuring out who gave her the smackdown, mark my words. The obvious business around Bobby’s name made me stop dead and try to figure out what the name might be an anagram for (Not “Macguffin” – I already tried it). My guess? “Pedestrian Bobby” from an English guy means maybe we should be looking for a cop.

I was extremely impressed by Rodin Esquejo’s and Sonia Oback’s art. It’s damn near photorealistic, to the point where I’m wondering just how much of it was lightboxed from reference photos (and considering one image is of Elle in a Blind Melon Bee Girl costume, having that kind of photo reference leads me to infer either Esquejo or Oback is having weirder fun at night than I am). The line work is fine but not busy, the people look like actual people (generally hipster people, but still), and the faces are expressive. Panel layouts are clean and easy to follow, the storytelling is clear, and the coloring has a cool painted look to it. You might find yourself wishing something heavy would fall on many of the characters, but you can be assured that if your prayers are answered, it will look good when it happens.

Like I said at the start, this is a difficult book for me to recommend or condemn. I found almost every character, be they wealthy swine or Park Slope Millennial Artist Hipster, to be contemptible and unlikeable, which is a decided strike against my wanting to hang in with this book… but then again, I have no time for HBO’s Sex And The City or Girls, both of which a lot of people actually like despite featuring similar characters, so I guess I’m saying that your mileage may vary.

However, if you are a hardcore mystery fan who gets into them for the plots, this seems to be a carefully planned whodunit that will more than likely get your motor running. The level of detail put into setting up the crime, the timeline and the suspects is impressive, and might just – just – be enough for me to check in next month to find out who tuned up the girl who you just know buys fair trade coffee and just hates Kony. Based on my reaction to the people in her world, who knows? It might have been me.