Various crisis events will be back this week after excellent first issues. The problems with each one-shot series anthology exploring different characters means that it’s a simple pickup for casual readers. This week, Dennis Camp and Eric Zawaziki explore the lives of men working in slaughterhouses, but reality is bent and questioning everything.
Calling Assorted Crisis Event #2 Trippy is modest. This issue unfolds through creative formats, plots and character studies, as if our hero is becoming anxious from time. The story begins with a cry as the bird of prey approaches the person on the ground. We then cut to a boy screaming in horror at the museum’s raptor running into his mother’s arms. We turn the page and see that the panel structure is the same, and the same boy is a man who holds an elderly mother at his father’s funeral. Soon, readers are off guard as rules surrounding time and space are off the table.
As the story progresses, the grooves are literally filled with blood as they jump across different ages for our hero. It starts at the top of the page and drips a little more blood with each turn of the page. Here, it can be profoundly begging for multiple reads.
As far as the plot is concerned, our hero’s father died at work in a slaughterhouse. His son works there to achieve his goals, but while he’s there he appears to be in and out of reality. His manager roams him with overjoy to kill the cow, in addition to the surreal nature of the story. How can a man bring joy to the murder of a cow?
From the hero’s dangerous trekking to the country to the need to acquire jobs so that he can feed his children, the themes of life, death, and survival are rampant with issues. Depending on your interpretation, it all peaks with a happy ending.
Social comments continue in the series. Our main character’s family is poor and we are trying to achieve our goals in a capitalist society where job security is far from a priority. There is also a thread about killing animals, and it doesn’t hit the veganism message, but when a poor cow got a bolt on his head it certainly surpassed my heart.
Pay attention to the blood in the upper groove.
Credits: Image
What this problem lacks is whether things are actually happening, what was far more present at the beginning. For example, dinosaurs are depicted as phantoms and ghosts. It must be real as I see the damage they inflict on the hero’s colleagues, but I still questioned things. The final issue appeared to have local temporal and spatial displacements, but here they appear to be connected to the main character. Maybe that’s the point, but I realized I was confused about what was going on and wanted a little more structure for the oddity of all that.
That being said, Zawadzki does an incredible job that means all hallucinations. Things can easily fall off the rails, but through layout design and contrasting play, you won’t be confused as to what’s going on. He will make you feel cows, you feel like you are there with the hero, and hate the corporations that will pass him through it. It’s a victory.
Assorted Crisis Events #2 is a fascinating and emotionally raw entry in an anthology series that blends psychological fear with social critique. It doesn’t provide the same narrative clarity as the issue of the debut, but it’s more than making up for it with bold storytelling and visual innovation. It’s a challenging read, but rewards attention and self-reflection.
“Various Crisis Events” #2 is seductive and emotionally raw
Various Crisis Events #2
Assorted Crisis Events #2 is a fascinating and emotionally raw entry in an anthology series that blends psychological fear with social critique. It doesn’t provide the same narrative clarity as the issue of the debut, but it’s more than making up for it with bold storytelling and visual innovation. It’s a challenging read, but rewards attention and self-reflection.
Ingenious visual storytelling from Eric Zawaziki, dynamic layout and panel design enhance the surreal tone.
The themes of sadness, capitalism, and ethical ambiguity are explored in nuance and emotional depth.
Dripping blood grooves and temporary jumps confuse readers in the best way, leading to multiple measurements.
The lack of clarity about reality and hallucination may irritate some readers.
It is slightly less structurally grounded than the first problem. This can cause some story threads to feel abstract or unresolved.
