August 25th, 2009
Misery Depot Comic
Misery Depot is a science fiction comic written by Hermes Pique and illustrated by Juan Romera, they’ve both done a good job. However, with its 25 pages, Misery Depot, unfortunately, doesn’t explore the setting much which results in a run-of-the-mill Scifi story.
*Spoiler alert!*
Central to the story is a mother and her daughter, Agatha. From what I’ve gathered, the two have had a relatively strained relationship, mainly because of the mother’s mental illness. Agatha decided to commit her mother to a “sanatorium” and, seemingly, just live out her life in ignorant bliss of what exactly the sanatorium did. The sanatorium, which I believe the title of the comic refers to, is a place to store the mad, old people whose minds have degenerated into pure paranoia or childish regress. This being a dark and sinister dystopian future, the patients are, of course, stored in vats at a huge cutting-edge facility. By accident, apparently, the naked mother is released from her vat and seeks out her emotionally cold daughter, only to be rejected and sent back.
It would have been nice if Pique and Romera had invested more time in expanding both setting and plot. There’s no doubt these two guys are good at what they do and they do it without any detours what so ever; the story is trim and simple and the illustrations do a good job of explaining what the text and plot does not. But I want more, I want to know more about the sanatorium, I want to know Agatha’s feelings and why she, apparently, never bothered to visit her mother or even check out the sanatorium, and I want to know what happened (and is going to happen) to the old man etc.
PRLog wrote later this year that a new comic is in the works from Papyrus Comics, the publishers of Misery Depot, but I was unable to find any information about a new comic from Papyrus (seemingly, Misery Depot is the only comic they’ve published; their twitter profile links to the Misery Depot web page). If these guys decide to make a new comic, I hope it’ll explore the setting and expand the story.
All this being said, it is, as always, fucking awesome when somebody decides to publish their works under a Creative Commons license, especially when they’ve got the craft down like Pique and Romera do. And even though it might not sound like it, I’m actually recommending that you read this comic. What saddens me is merely that there’s too little of it, not the quality.
Misery Depot was published in late 2008 and has, somewhat recently, been ported to the Android telephone. The comic, it is estimated, has currently been read by more than 10.000 people and it’s been translated to Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and French.
Via: PRLog
