Review- BECOMING

BECOMING (Arcana, 2012; Softcover)

Original Graphic Novel

Writer: Brooke Burgess

Artist: Dane Cypel

Wow, this is some fucked up shit. Remember when you were 23 or 24 years old and thought that you had all of the answers to life? How the world was so simple and stupid but you knew how to fix it? An overly proud young man tries to challenge his college professor, Dr. Magus, and show him how much smarter he is than him. This leads to a game with unwanted consequences for our young antagonist, Mr. Price (I can't recall his first name ever being used). Sorry to be so vague, but if I go any further into the story I will spoil it for you. 

This story relies more on tension than gore, and it succeeds. The writing, artwork, and coloring are all top notch. The story has a sense of sophistication without pretense, which is refreshing since they usually go hand and hand. If you are a fan of Horror comic books then you can't go wrong with Becoming.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

The OCD zone- The gutters are tight on this book, with some of the word balloons sucked into them.

Paper rating: 5 out of 5. Crazy thick coated stock paper. I like it. It has a bizarre texture to it, almost like a parchment or something due to the way that the coating is applied. I believe that this was an artistic choice since The Evil Tree, which was printed around the same time, has a completely different grade and texture of paper.

Binding rating: 3 out of 5. Glued binding in a cardstock cover. The binding is pretty tight on this book.

Cardstock cover coating rating: 4 out of 5. This has a coated cardstock cover, but the cover is pretty thin.