Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #3 Review and **SPOILERS**

We're Off to See Muldroogans

Written By: Gerard Way & Jon Rivera

Art By: Michael Avon Oeming

Colors By: Nick Filardi

Letters By: Clem Robins

Backup By: Tom Scioli

Cover By: Michael Avon Oeming and Nick Filardi

Cover Price: $3.99

On Sale Date: December 21, 2016

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

For a comic book titled Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, there isn’t much happening with the cybernetic eye. Don’t get me wrong, it figures into things often enough, but you’d expect it to be the crux of the story instead of just an incidental fact of life. Cave Carson has a cybernetic eye, Wild Dog has a hockey mask, and Chloe has an attitude. I have been enjoying this series more with each issue—will that trend continue to the third?? Read on and find out!

Explain It!

This story picks up right from the last issue, with Wild Dog and Cave Carson making off in the Mighty Mole, Cave’s daughter Chloe following alongside in a sensible sedan, all of them pursued by a gigantic green fungus monster borne of the corpses of some finger men. After some coaxing and several panels of pants-shitting terror, Chloe jumps into the Mole and Cave turns it to burrow underground—but the fungus creature follows! The Mighty Mole is some mining machine, I tell you what. It bores tunnels with a laser, apparently, so rapidly so as to support a winding, high speed chase through dense earth. Our trio comes to a cave, where they face-off with the fungus monster, gross insect thing-to-Mighty Mole, when Cave notes that this cavern has high deposits of Uvinium, a mineral that makes worms grow large. Just then, a giant worm pops out of the ground and distracts the fungus monster (and, indeed, rips it in two) so Team Carson plus Wild Dog can escape.

Seems like Cave’s sneaky break from his former employers, EBX Mining, did not go undetected. Small wonder, since it did involve the theft of the Mighty Mole by way of blasting a hole straight through the front of the building. This has resulted in a late-night phone call from EBX CEO to Johnny Blake, and it looks like he’s going to have to take out the trash. Or delegate said trash-taking to an underling, poising him as the fall guy should things go awry. Actually, it turns out he’s going to lead the mission to retrieve the Mighty Mole and kidnap Chloe, whose royal lineage they need to access the underground kingdom of Muldroog. Keep up, folks, don’t let me catch you nappin’! As they gear up what looks to be an even slicker Mighty Mole, Johnny notes to his scientist colleague Paul that there seems to be an awful lot of weapons being loaded onto the craft, which is pretty insane if a gung-ho guy like this is saying it. They must be loading Gatling grenade guns and shotguns that shoot butcher knives if it gives Johnny Blake pause.

Back underground, Cave and company have uncovered one of his caches, and they’re have some R n’ R. Chloe confronts her dad angrily for not being up front about her heritage, but what was he going to say? “You’re the heiress to a vast underworld kingdom of untold riches, and oh yeah finish your beets.” After Cave hallucinates his dead wife and fake hugs her under a waterfall, he makes nice with his daughter and then everyone sets out to visit Muldroog since that’s obviously where the apex of this story will happen. On the way, they note many dead Muldroogans littering the grounds outside the city, and as they get close to Muldroog’s walls, Cave can see—it’s been sacked!

The backups by Tom Scioli are weird as usual. I didn’t really understand the Wonder Twins one, again, though it does look like there’s a narrative between issues happening here. There was also this curse-filled re-telling of Green Arrow’s origin, using Xeen Arrow, a Silver Age character that was like the “Green Arrow of Another World!” or something. The surreal back-ups notwithstanding, I did enjoy this issue quite a lot, and found it quite action-packed for a story that began with what looked like an old fart at the end of his rope. In terms of advancing the story, there’s not a ton here, but there’s a lot of characterization that is desperately needed to fill in the blanks for the reader. This is a great read, and you don’t even need to be a weirdo to enjoy it. But it helps!

Bits and Pieces:

In order to get to the bottom of this subterranean mystery, Cave Carson and company...will have to go deeper! The plot thickens a bit, but the characterization thickens more and the story is well served for it. This is an action-heavy book with a strange sensibility that probably has a broader appeal than I give it credit for. So prove me wrong! Check out this comic book, love it, and then tell me where to stick it!

8/10