'Jawbreakers: Lost Souls' Review

In the industry of art, criticism is a hard thing to accept and deal with. When a fan of comics by the name of Richard C. Meyer voiced his opinion, offering criticism of the current state of affairs in the Comic Industry, he made powerful enemies. As a result, when Meyer tried to put his money where his mouth was and make his own mark on the industry, those very same enemies tried to destroy his career before it had even begun. Despite these attempts, Meyer persevered. When his enemies attacked the independent publisher Antarctic Press, he created his own publishing label Splatto del Gatto and used Indiegogo to crowdfund his projects. The first books we got from this line were: Iron Sights (a story about special forces operators taking on the cartel) and Jawbreakers: Lost Souls (which was Meyer's own personal 'super' book). While Meyer and his opinions are certainly a matter of controversy, Meyer deserved a chance to showcase his ability and try to prove his point by putting out his own book. What was done to Meyer was wrong, what his enemies attempted to do put an indelible stain on the industry as a place where creators should be allowed to pioneer their expression. As a result, I decided to get ahold of a copy of Meyer's 'Super' book: Jawbreakers. However, with the Indiegogo closed for the first book, getting ahold of it was easier said than done. After 5 consecutive bid wars on eBay that spanned over almost a week, and another 4 to 5 days of shipping, I finally got my hands on a copy of Jawbreakers: Lost Souls. What I found was a fun and visually pleasing book that has a lot of room to improve, but is all in all a promising start.

While promoting Lost Souls Meyer advertised this as a fun 90's style action book that took a lot of inspiration from big-budget, Hollywood action films, namely The Expendables. In this regard, at the very least, Meyer delivered. Jawbreakers: Lost Souls feels like an 80's action flick in comic-book form. The art (primarily in the book's first story) is gorgeous and does a fantastic job at delivering a crisper, modern take on that old school 90's comic aesthetic. However fun and captivating the art is, the real strength of this book lies in its fantastic dialogue (I don't think I can recall a dynamic between characters I have enjoyed as much as I did the dynamic between Silkworm and Kuffz). I don't know if it's just having to suffer through writers like Tom King that struggle horribly with it, but Meyer's penchant for capturing diversity in character voice frankly could easily put him alongside Titans of the Industry from the Silver and Bronze Age. That being said, Jawbreakers: Lost Souls is far from perfect, and its glaring fault lies in its narrative structure.

In his videos, Meyer frequents the expression "write every issue as though it were your last." Overall, it's a good sentiment that translates to putting forward an A+ effort into a story, but from a writing perspective, however, I fear that this approach may have actually hindered Meyer's writing in regards to the organic flow of the narrative. The biggest problem Lost Souls faces is the constant introduction of new plot points with little to no build-up. The story already starts off using the trope of skipping a team origin and having characters already be established. This trope, all in all, is fine, but it also requires world-building to occur as the narrative progresses. Instead of doing this, Myer goes full steam ahead, throwing a new concept or plot point every few panels and this is super confusing. Meyer knows the plans and payoffs for these concepts, and that's great, it's his job to know these things. However, it's also his job to get his audience to invest in those things, and it's hard to get invested in these concepts when there is so little invested as the team as individuals. In the third story of the book there is a major character death, a core member of Jawbreakers dies, and I felt nothing! That's not okay. This is a team book, the loss of a core character should mean something. I remember when Morph died in the second part of "Night of the Sentinels" in the 90's X-men cartoon. He was a character I had barely seen, more importantly, he's not even a core member of the X-men, but the story properly conveyed what he meant to the people he was with, and so the death hit hard. When a core member of your team dies, the reader should be devastated, and as I said before, I felt nothing at all save for a bit of confusion as to why the character was snuffed out before he had the opportunity to be fleshed out. 

All in all, Jawbreakers: Lost Souls was a solid read. I spent 31 dollars USD after shipping and between the quality of the product and the fact that it was signed, the book was worth every penny. However, there is a lot of room for improvement, and honestly, I think the best solution for this is by Meyer getting ahold of an editor. It's hard to be impartial about your own work, so having a 3rd party look things over and force you to look at things from an outside perspective should improve and fix the problems I found in Lost Souls. Who knows, maybe he even got them fixed for the next edition of Jaw Breakers, G0d King. Luckily I was able to get ahold of that one much easier, as the Indiegogo for the project is still open! If you're interested, go on ahead and look it up!