The Moon is Following Us vol. 1

Penny was living a good life with her loving parents, Samantha and Duncan, until she fell asleep one night and didn’t wake up.  Doctors and modern science weren’t able to provide an explanation, so when a man named Tash Severin glides into their lives with his flock of owls and promises that he can help them, they’re all for it.  Now Penny’s parents are inside of her dreams to fight off the malevolent force that has taken up root inside of them, and wears an uncomfortably familiar face.  What does it mean and what more will it take for Sam and Dun to get their daughter back?

“The Moon is Following Us” is written by Daniel Warren Johnson and it’s the first series he’s done that he hasn’t illustrated entirely by himself.  While he illustrates the parts that take place in the real world, Riley Rossmo handles everything that takes place in Penny’s dream world.  That’s not a bad thing as, after years of working on various Image and DC projects, this proves to be a great showcase for what Rossmo is capable of.  He takes the toyetic influences of a child’s mind and makes them into the stuff of thrilling fantasy warfare.  You won’t see a giant snake biting a helicopter out of the sky anywhere else, let alone as strikingly done as it is here.

While that makes this first volume a great showcase for what Rossmo can do, it winds up being considerably less of one for Johnson.  I still think that he’s one of the best artists working in comics today, but this makes it clear that his strengths lie in inventive designs and action.  Though his attention to detail makes the real world sections pleasing to look at, they really only come alive when the dream world seeps into them.  Then you’ve got the plotting and dialogue which, while not terrible, are pedestrian at best.  It’s not quite enough to make me forego seeing how this ends in vol. 2, except I’m already adjusting my expectations to assume that the explanation for the title situation won’t be a satisfying one.