Everything vol. 2: Black Friday

The previous volume ended with one of its characters taking a brick to the head during a parade.  Fortunately for the character in question, Shirley is made of stronger stuff.  Literally and figuratively.  Yet she’s still uneasy about her friend Lori’s rise through the ranks at Everything and starting to display some doubts about store owner Marshall Gooder motivations in trying to bring happiness to all.  Doubts which she’s right to have as former stereo salesman Rick is currently being tortured underneath the store, and former city manager Eberhard dies a slow death along with his daughters.  However, not everyone in the town of Holland, Michigan, is against them.  It’s just that when your main allies are a hundred-year-old blind woman and a talking plush blue bear, hoping that things turn out for the best kind of feels like a lost cause, you know?

Writer Christopher Cantwell and artist I.N.J. Culbard have a different plan in mind.  The problem is that it feels a little bit predictable when all is said and done.  Both creators do a good job of continuing the sense of quirky unease that drove the first volume, and there are some expertly timed bits of humor that keep the tone from feeling too oppressive.  It’s just that this concluding volume of “Everything” lacks a genuine moment of surprise which made me go, “I didn’t see THAT coming!” to take the series to the next level.  Granted, I do appreciate the fact that I could tell that Cantwell was working with a real plan here, and Culbard’s art does an excellent job of selling all this weirdness and surrealism.  “Everything” certainly looks and feels different compared to other kinds of comics.  I’d even go so far as to say it’s the “good” kind of different.  I just don’t think it’s good enough to recommend to other people who read those last two sentences and weren’t sold on what it’s selling.