By: Jim McCann (story), Sami Basri (art), Jessica Kholinne (colors)
The Story: There’s only one thing to do with all this psychic pressure—sing your heart out!
The Review: Since this series first began, McCann has made a big fuss over its mysteries. “Everyone is a suspect,” he insisted. “No one is innocent!” At the same time, McCann has been steadily eliminating characters as likely suspects, while piling more and more evidence against others. By this point, you’ve grown pretty comfortable with your own settled assumptions as to who’s guilty and who’s not.
McCann seems to sense our complacency, as this issue takes some major steps to break us out of it. It’s one thing to learn that Eddie is “[w]orking both sides,” as his profile in the roll call says; it’s another to see the incredible depth of feeling he secretly has for his sister. When McCann first revealed Eddie as a double-agent, you couldn’t help holding on to your suspicion, convinced that at some point he’ll betray the group again. But once you see his tenderness in a rare moment of privacy, you’ll have no choice but to re-evaluate your judgment.
You’ll have to do a lot of mental readjustment for several of the characters in this issue, which is just strong character development on McCann’s part. Even a relative nobody like Constance, Mr. Peterssen’s stereotypically foxy secretary, turns out to have far more crucial a role in the story than you might have expected. She doesn’t flinch at Eddie’s condescending epithets (“You are a glorified bike messenger with tits and a smile.”), and even his father’s rejection merely seems to spur her audacity. “I don’t need your counsel on my family,” Ed Senior hisses.
“Oh, that ship’s long sailed,” she replies.
Where does she get this confidence? It can’t just be the “mistake” she had with Elle’s dad, can it? And is her flattery really so valued by the Fifth that she believes herself immune from being touched by anyone else?
Of course, the revelation of the Fifth as—spoiler alert—Mr. Peterssen’s father does feel like a game-changer in the series’ power dynamics, though it’s not clear how. On the face of it, this seems to be the “old dude” Dane once saw with Elle at the family’s winter lodge, yet this would indicate that Eddie remains unaware of his own grandfather’s existence. This is all turning out to be one big family conspiracy, which makes the nature and purpose of Jairus that much more mysterious.
If Jairus has become the driving focus of Mind the Gap, then Dr. Gellar has moved into its direct orbit. All along, she has been an important observer in the story’s events, watching her own place of work become a kind of stage as the characters move in and out, setting off bursts of activity and strangeness here and there. Now we learn that she may have been the one (or one of the ones) to set all this into motion, as she recognizes a sample of Jairus as “my work[.]”
Interesting as Jairus is, it is simply a byproduct. Elle remains the nucleus of the title, the center of its universe (as rudimentarily displayed on Eddie’s wall). She has consistently rejected her own helplessness, defying her comatose state to interact with the plot. Split across multiple brain-dead, communicating with her allies seemingly at random, it seems like she’s the one moving the pieces here. “I’m tired,” she tells Jo, “Of being so many other people. Other Elles. A different person to everyone.” To us, she’s been a victim; now she reveals that she has been an actor in her own fall, proving that everyone truly is a suspect and no one is innocent.
This is clearly the best work of Basri’s career thus far—that I have seen, anyway. Here it looks like he’s taken the artistic evolution he showed on the appalling Voodoo to its most sophisticated stage. Somehow he manages to make every character look attractive, though still distinct enough to be credible. His emotional beats hit harder than ever, with greater subtlety and emotional truth than ever before. Kholinne has similarly stepped up her coloring game, emulating the rich tones Arif Prianto established for this series, with all its strange mixture of warmth and coldness.
Conclusion: Mind the Gap has really gained some momentum now, and it begins to drag all of its characters with it, even the ones previously on the fringe. With strong artistic support from Basri, this title has finally started to reveal signs of brilliance.
Grade: A-
-Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – I sure hope Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell are appreciating all this free plugging for [title of show]. Who’d ever have thought you’d see characters break out into an extended musical number in a comic?