Review: Blink
"How do you wake up from a nightmare when you're not dreaming?"
Mia lives in the city that never sleeps, eight million people, busy, crowded, noisy... She lives with her deadbeat parents in a poor part of town. She has no friends and she's not doing well at school. New York is a wonder, full of happy people, but happiness eludes Mia. She can see it all around her but she can't feel it.
One day at the park she has a bizarre experience, Huge, colourless tentacles burst from a fountain and pull her into the water. Nobody sees it or hears her cries for help. Beneath the water she sinks into darkness... then snaps back to reality. People are looking at her strangely and backing away from her. There is no sign of the beast.
Returning to her hovel of a home, she goes up to the roof so she can watch the sunset and enjoy the peace and quiet. Then her parents start fighting again. Shouting, cursing, screaming... She can't take it anymore.
She cries out "STOP!"
And everything does.
There is sudden silence. No sounds from her apartment, no sounds from the city below. Nothing at all. As she watches, colour drains from the world around her: the buildings, the trees, the sky... everything.
She goes down to the street and everyone is frozen, as still as colourless statues, like a snapshot in time. She speaks to them but they do not respond. She tries to push them, they do not move. She walks around the city, searching for any sign of movement, but everywhere it is the same story.
Moving through thick crowds of people in the most populous city in America, she is alone.
Then a shadow falls over her...
In the sky, a huge mass of writhing red tentacles is descending towards her, blocking out the light. Its shadow stretches out before it, swallowing up the ground, and the shadow is wrong: it is in the shape of hundreds of grasping hands...
Mia starts running.
Blink by writer Rex Ogle and artist Eduardo Francisco is the terrifying tale of a girl thrown into a world that resembles the one she knows but is paradoxically empty, hollow and lifeless. It is all very metaphorical, of course; the themes here are neglect, apathy, alienation ... Mia is a young person forgotten by society, born to people who are useless at being parents, only nominally included in the community she lives in, not valued by the system, not one of the cool kids at school. She is nothing and no-one.
Visually, Mia is the only spot of colour in a black and white world as New York is reduced to some very finely-drawn line art. The landscapes are starkly beautiful with sharp, clear architecture and parks as Francisco recreates various highlights of the city. The human characters - including, ironically, the frozen ones - are rendered very naturally, each emotional note on point.
Mia's journey through her new world is long and mentally exhausting, but it is also a deeply personal journey towards a new understanding and a new outlook on life. With no-one to help her, she has to rely on herself. Freed from routines and responsibilities, the urgencies of modern living, she has nothing but time. She begins to see the beauty around her that she has never noticed before. Facing uncertainty and fear, she has to find it within herself to rise to the challenge and take control of her own destiny.
There is a strong message that many readers will find relevant to their own struggles. Alone in a crowd? Lost in a world that doesn't seem to care? There is a way through.
You can bring back the colours.
Zak Webber
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