“The Fly: Outbreak” #2 takes us through the first 17 days of quarantine after everyone is exposed to the “disease” during Bartok’s escape. Martin sits in solitary secretly video chatting with Beth while tension grow among the quarantined. The disease is spreading fast and it affects the mind in really scary ways. The looming creepiness of Cronenberg’s films is invoked in this slightly stretched and overly sexual issue.
WRITTEN BY: Brandon Seifert
ART BY: Menton3
PUBLISHER: IDW
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: April 22, 2015
Martin describes the stages of transformation in great detail as the disease begins to take hold within the quarantine. The visuals paired with his explanation are a welcome plot device, but the symptoms and effects of stage one alone were so many that by the end it’s impossible to keep it all straight. Then Noelani breaks it down pretty succinctly: exposure turns you into a paranoid, aggressive, horny, super human. As more people begin to exhibit symptoms Martin expresses his feelings of responsibility for them. His motivation and sense of desperation are hardly overwhelming. The book struggles to convey anything in subtext. The events in this issue could have happened in half the pages without losing anything at all, and the pacing is laborious.
Menton3’s style commands admiration. Even his work in the first issue is incredible, but somehow on these pages his work looks lifeless. Every person in the book is stiff like early PC character models. The frame where the man hurls the table and the red headed woman are especially plastic and look like bad video games. The art is at its best when Menton3 is using extreme contrast to silhouette the characters, thankfully thats most of the book. There’s really not a lot to love with the visual style.
Speaking of love, the series is shoving sex down the throats of its readers in a way that seems pointless. If the kink in issue one didn’t give you a clue wait until you see that weird ass shot, bareback boning, giant dildo, and constant fuck talk this issue shoe horns in. It isn’t sexy, it doesn’t feel authentic, and it certainly doesn’t create any kind of juxtaposition to seem like its making a point. It just seems forced to channel this Cronenbergian idea of sexuality, but fails to do so. Cronenberg is about subtextual attraction to abnormality, through the connective tissue of what makes inanimate objects more human, and how the human body can defy the human mind. It seems that Brandon Seifert doesn’t understand any of this.
This is the book no one asked for, and even those open to being convinced still probably won’t be. Your $4 can be better spent elsewhere. Diehard fans likely won’t be disgusted with this sequel. (In fact please let me know if there are any die hard Cronenberg fans out there digging this book) There is simply a lot out there with a lot more quality. Avoid this, if you want strange, try “Intersect” by Ray Fawkes