Originally posted on Irish Comic News (9/Aug/2018)
Written by Colm Griffin.
Art by Colm Griffin.
Letters by Alice Coleman.
Cover art by Morgan O’Brien.
Editor-in-chief Ciaran Marcantonio.Dillon King returns in the latest installment of Ocean City. Issue two narrows the focus of the story and follows Dillon himself as he begins to suspect he has superpowers, much like “The Specials” of Mama’s stories. With issue two almost entirely dedicated to Dillon (aside from a brief interlude), this allows the story to flesh out the characters that populate his social circle.
The dialogue between Dillon and his friends, Mia and Jeffrey, gave issue two some good character development with a fun back’n’forth in the dialogue that you would expect from a group of friends. Dillon is clearly excited at the prospect of having superpowers but his friends reaction indicate that Dillon may be prone to telling tall tales.
The art is well suited to this tale of the beginnings of a young superhero. I did really like the page where Mia and Jeffrey react to Dillon announcing he believes he has superpowers. It’s a simple idea but works really well to convey how strong their reaction is to the announcement. The lettering handles the dialogue and captions well with some nice work done on sound effects, there’s a nice variety to the sound effects.
I enjoyed issue one and was looking forward to issue two to see how Dillon’s adventures unfold. With the world-building taken care of in issue one, issue two starts to get into the core of the story as well as fleshing out the characters. It was also a good idea to include the interlude to remind the reader of things that are happening outside of Dillon’s social bubble. No doubt we’ll see the relevance of these events as the series progresses.
As someone who is a big fan of the early adventures of young superheroes, issue two of Ocean City has made this a small press series that I’ll be following with interest.
Ocean City 2 launches at Dublin Comic Con.