Rivers, Justin & Zell, Courtney – The Wonder City: The Great Whale of Coney Island

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The Wonder City: The Great Whale of Coney Island

I’ll give them this much: this series sure is ambitious. This is the first volume of the Wonder City saga, although I’m not sure if I can say that because I don’t know how long this is projected to be. As far as I can see from the website they don’t give any indication, and that sort of thing is important to know in a long term project. Combine that with the fact that this graphic novel was kind of dull and it’s hard to work up any serious enthusiasm for it. Probably best to start at the beginning though, right? We start off looking at an average morning in the life of a working class Brooklyn family in 1942. The father is away at war, the young son is trying to be the man of the house, the mother is just trying to get by and the young girl is mostly just an average young girl. A mysterious woman comes along and inquires about a necklace that was handed down through the generations to the young girl (she’s 6, which is a little important later). The girl considers selling it, but hijinx ensue and it doesn’t happen. The mysterious woman overhears them saying where they’ll be the next day so she follows them to Coney Island. There’s an incident with a whale (it’s in both the title and the synopsis on the back cover, so this isn’t spoiling anything yet) and the rest of the graphic novel deals with the fallout from that event. We also get a few more hints about why this mysterious lady is looking for that necklace, how the young boy is dealing with his dreams, and several other general hints of things to come. The trouble is that there’s nothing overly compelling about any of this yet, and that kind of thing really needs to be established in a first graphic novel. What does the charm do? It’s OK to leave that general if it’s early in the story, but the hints given fail to tantalize the reader. The back cover also says that this “re-imagines the entire history of New York City,” which is intriguing, but not a single thing in this book would really imply that. The writing is decent enough, as the characters are reasonably compelling and I’m fine with a glacial pace as long as it’s going somewhere. Same with the art, even if certain panels look more rushed than others. The main problem here is the basic reality of the small press publishing business. They say that Kickstarter helped them get the funding together for this comic, but are people who read this going to still be that excited to donate for a second volume? You really need to hit the ground running these days to have a hope of finishing an extended series like this, and the first volume really didn’t accomplish that. By the way, I’d love to be wrong about this and find out in a few years (and a few volumes) that readers are fine with supporting a slow burn of a story. I really, really would. No price listed, which is also silly (although I could find out if I wanted to post a payment through Amazon, which I do not), but there is a link to get a digital copy on their website if you’re interested in such a thing.