Originally posted on Irish Comic News (25/Apr/2019)
Written and created by Colm Griffin
Letters by Alice Coleman
Cover by Albert Lledo Grima
Published by Rogue ComicsDillon, or DK as he is also known, returns in the third installment of the Ocean City series. This issue is very much focussed on DK and his first foray into the life of a superhero. DK has his friend Jeremy keeping company via wireless comms. Throw in a mysterious gunman following DK plus some happenings elsewhere and there’s definitely something there to entice readers to follow DK in adventures beyond issue three.
The art on some pages have a nice creative use of panel layouts. One such example is where DK makes his way down from the rooftops towards the streets. The chosen page design gives the page the desired momentum you would want where someone is bounding their way down large buildings. There was a small issue on a couple of panels where the transition between panels wasn’t obvious due to black pages with thin borders. Some stronger panel borders would make for better clarity in those panels. I did enjoy one of the page turns in the mugging scene. The page in question is after the turn and really gets as much impact as it can on the reader.
Lettering for the most part is well done. A nice touch was the captions of dialogue over the comms being coloured coded to indicate who was speaking. Though there was a panel in a different scene where a caption was used to display the thoughts of a character. It led to a brief moment of confusion as I did wonder who the character was talking to over comms. But one caption in one panel doesn’t do anything to spoil the overall reading experience.
Issue three sees the Ocean City series start to develop the story beyond DK and his friends. Mysterious people have begun to appear, and at least one of them doesn’t look like they’re going to be best buddies with DK. Issue three very much feels that the series is starting to move into the next phase of the story.
There are moments of issue three where I got vibes of the early issues of Spider-man. A young hero trying to find their feet with their new found powers, while being naive about the dangers of the new reality they are now stepping into.
I’ve enjoyed the Ocean City series so far and am looking forward to seeing how things develop as the mysterious figures begin to make moves that require DK to take action.