Smith, Ryan Cecil – SF Supplementary File #2B

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SF Supplementary File #2B

I mentioned in the review for the first issue of this series that one of the joys of manga comics was the fact that the action was allowed room to breathe, that the readers never felt all that rushed on their journey through the story. Well, the obvious negative to that is the fact that not a whole lot happens in this issue. Which, in case you need reminding or for some reason aren’t reading this series, is the second of three issues, which Ryan did manage to finish on a monthly publishing schedule. Granted, the ability to maintain a monthly publishing schedule for three issues shouldn’t be considered a huge accomplishment, but in the small press world of today it’s pretty rare. Anyway, this issue deals with the two main characters of Esmereldas and Boundless Ocean Boy. They’re both traveling on her ship and she discovers his I.D. card, which is a wonderful excuse to tell the readers all about him. He declares that he can’t travel with her and wants to make it on his own, she points out that his I.D. card makes that problematic and she eventually finds a suitable planet and drops him off. Well, she thought it was a suitable planet anyway, but that turns out not to be the case, and we have the set-up for the final issue of the series. I skimmed over some of the details of the series here (read my review of the first issue if you’re curious or would like this review to make sense), but I have every confidence that this issue is going to fit in just fine in the long run. In the reviewing scheme of things this is a lousy issue to get if you just want to try this guy out, but it’s pretty much always been a bad idea to buy just the second issue of a three issue limited series. The only real problem with this one was a minor printing error that repeated a few pages. It’s hard enough to overcome a lifetime of habit and read this back to front and right to left instead of the other way around, so something like that printing error can be especially jarring. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be corrected in the collected edition, because that is happening, right? $4