Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye vol. 1: Going Underground

This series hails from Gerard Way’s “Young Animal” imprint and features what is easily the best title for an ongoing comic in the current market.  Ostensibly, “Cave Carson” is following in the same path as “Doom Patrol” and “Shade the Changing Girl” in freshening up old DC characters for modern sensibilities.  The catch here is that you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of the most hardcore of DC fanboys who actually remembers the title character in the first place.  So when Way and co-writer/scripter Jon Rivera start the series with an older, retired Cave in mourning over the death of his wife Eileen — who was also the princess of the underground Kingdom of Muldroog — I’m willing to accept it and see where they’re going.

That turns out to be “Somewhere very fun” (um, for the reader at least) as Cave finds out that the Muldroog is in danger, primarily from the company he’s been working for.  Oh, and the company president has been infected by an evil god from underground who needs Cave’s daughter Chloe to help said god escape.  Fortunately our protagonist is on top of things, grabbing his old tunnelling car the Mighty Mole as he escapes and goes on to hook up with his buddy, the vigilante known as Wild Dog, to rescue Chloe and find out what’s happened to Muldroog.

There’s a gleeful irreverence that pervades this series, even when things get darker and weirder towards the end.  Sometimes it’s simple, such as when Cave pulls a gun on the old security guard who looks after the Mighty Mole during his escape and tells him he’s doing so because he doesn’t want the old guy to get fired.  Other times it’s a little strange, when we see Cave, Wild Dog, and Chloe ingesting a psychedelic pudding in order to ward off the mind-control aspects of their adversary.  This irreverence goes a long way towards making the overall adventure fun and something I’d want to see more of.

It also helps that the main trio of characters are an interesting bunch too.  As mentioned above, Cave is suffering from depression at the start of the series, but this new adventure helps pull him right out of it as he reconnects with one of the great loves of his life:  exploration.  The relationship he has with Chloe also feels surprisingly natural, with their arguments actually coming from believable places and not a need to create more drama.  As for Wild Dog, I know there’s a certain section of fandom that has an irrepressible love for this low-rent vigilante.  I’m not one of them, but Way and Rivera have actually hit upon a take that works really well in the context of the story.  In that he’s the one conservative gun-nut you want on your side when you’re fighting off worms, transforming cult members, and that evil god under the Earth’s crust.

Michael Avon Oeming provides the art for this first volume and he really goes all-out here.  The opening pages are appropriately muted to convey the ordinariness of Cave’s current lot in life while hinting at the craziness that will unfold over subsequent issues.  When the chase begins and things go underground, things start getting crazy.  As they well should with a story that involves giant worms, an underground kingdom and a cybernetic eye.  Oeming’s layouts have been a little difficult to follow in the past, and that’s no different here.  However, it continues to be an issue I’m willing to put up with due to the style and energy he brings to his work.

Is “Cave Carson” for everyone?  If you like your mature-readers DC revamps crazy and weird, then you’re going to love this.  That said, I can also see how some of the weirder bits will likely turn some people off.  The villains are, while being appropriately dastardly, still thinly-sketched along with the supporting cast by the end of the volume.  And as for that vaunted cybernetic eye, while it provides a couple of vol. 1’s most (gruesomely) memorable scenes its importance to the overall plot is still a mystery at this point.

Even with these flaws, I still had a lot of fun with this first volume of “Cave Carson.”  Sales at this point of the series are not promising, so there’s a chance that its second volume may be its last.  That won’t be a problem if Way, Rivera, and Oeming can bring the story they’re telling to a satisfying conclusion.  In this case, that would involve a second volume as entertaining as its first.