Groundhogs’ Existence
Script: Magdalene Visaggio
Pencils, Inks, Cover: Sonny Liew
Colors: Chris Chuckry
Letters: Todd Klein
Assistant Editor: Maggie Howell
Editor: Andy Khouri
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: June 13, 2018
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
Imagine your superpower was to create nuclear
fission—a mushroom cloud atomic explosion, therefore—with your body. You could
only use it once, so you’d really be a walking case of Mutually Assured Destruction
with every other nuke-having power in the world. I think this would be useful
to force peaceful accord, or at least get a few bucks out of the deal. Caroline
didn’t even do that before she went all radioactive! Let’s see what she did get
up to in Eternity Girl #4, which I’ve reviewed, as follows!
Explain
It!
I used to play this game with myself when I was
younger, particularly when I was very tired: I’d be walking along, eyes
half-lidded with sleepiness, when I would decide for whatever reason that I’d
slipped from one reality to another. Doubtlessly influenced by comic books, I
imagined that I’d accidentally slipped between dimensions and emerged in
another that, sad to say, looked exactly like my own. Of course, I didn’t
actually skip across planes of existence; that would be a much more interesting
tale to tell. But Caroline the Eternity Girl, she’s floating through alternate
possibilities like someone with an unlimited bus pass. Only thing is that she
doesn’t want to see the breath of infinity. Caroline just wants to die.
It all began when she affected the chaos
engine, manifesting in the real world as causing a nuclear meltdown. Caroline
awoke to be resurrected by Director Sloan into some kind of golden robot with a
penis-shaped head. Sloan is murdered by a Caroline doppelganger, then she finds
herself in a Mad Max/Tank Girl style post-apocalyptic world, riding a sweet hog
and using super powers. Then, it’s a Silver Age comic, where Madame Atom has
taken control of the maguffin—and it’s during this reality that Rick, aka the
Never Man, shows up to try and stop Caroline from freaking out so much. Just
slap her one across the face, dude! It always works on hysterical women in
movies from the 1950s!
Things go through a couple of iterations, but
with Rick’s help, Caroline is able to dispel Madame Atom and then has a chat
with Rick at a diner. Rick points out that Caroline’s suicidal attitude isn’t
just affecting her, but everyone, everywhere. Caroline didn’t consider this,
and seems like she’ll stop fussing with the third dimension—but based on the
broken vinyl record of that one tracksuit-wearing Celestial or whatever he is,
it looks like things are still pretty hinky, universally-speaking! And plus
there are two more issues in this series, so that can’t be everything.
This issue is a lot of fun, what with the
different comic styles and genres explored as Caroline cruises through
dimensions. It was also satisfying to see Madame Atom take a powder, though she
played her role I was getting tired of watching her lead Caroline around by her
talons—she was beginning to feel like a character shoehorned into the story
just to let Caroline off the ethical hook. The storytelling here is fine,
though I find I don’t remember the names of characters introduced most
recently, which indicates that I am getting bored with the story, or that these
characters haven’t been presented in a way that makes them seem permanent. I
mean, are we gonna see that Dina woman again? She was supposed to be Caroline’s
best friend, but she was excised at the beginning of the last issue and we
haven’t seen her since. This is an intriguing story, but it could probably have
been presented in a much cleaner way.
Bits and
Pieces:
This issue is the most fun of the series, since it shows several contextual scenes taking place in various Caroline-derived realities. But the overall storytelling is lacking, and some of the characters feel forgettable, which makes for a somewhat frustrating read in single issues.
6.5/10
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