Comic review: The October Faction #4- Goodbye pretty comic

Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Damien Worm
Publisher: IDW
Released: 21st January 2015


I don’t want to further my reputation as the grumpy old man of comic book reviewers and needlessly slag this comic book off, because that’s no fun, and it’s kind of cheap of me as well.

Let’s face it. It’s easy to go on the Internet and call something terrible, say you hated it, and string together some pretty sentences to describe how awful it is. But what kind of individual would want to spend their days reading awful comic books and then destroying them on the Internet? I know it might appear that I do that all of the time on my blog, so I think it’s time for me to rein myself in.

From this day forward I will not waste my time deconstructing silly, throwaway, light-hearted, escapist comic books. I need to acknowledge that they are not for me, put them aside, stop buying them, and move on to something else.

If I come across a comic book that is hiding it’s insidious anti-human, global Police state message under cover of playfulness and silliness then I will point it out. But if a book has no agenda other than to entertain and avoid real-world issues then I’m not going to waste anybodies time by going on a massive 2000 word rant about it.

The October Faction #4 is one of those books that appears to be purposefully ignoring the real world. I understand that is what some (a lot?) of comic book readers want, but that’s not why I am reading them. The book offers a daft plot and some cuddly characters that you shouldn’t be taking too seriously, and it’s a jumping off point for me.

For anybody interested in the plot, it’s silly, and throwaway, and it has that post-modern, knowing, too cool for school thing going on with the dialogue. Characters are linguistically clever, but no wisdom is being imparted. Death is portrayed as a bit of a joke, foreshadowing that death in this comic isn’t really death, and so the last page reveal comes as no surprise. It’s just something that of course happened, because none of this is serious, and you are a bit daft if you are taking any of it seriously.

‘Have fun with the book dammit.’ That’s what writer Steve Niles will be shouting, if he reads this review. ‘Don’t take it so damn seriously mate’ (that’s something else that I’m sure he’d say).

But for me, as the reality junkie, anti collectivism, anti globalisation Internet tough guy twit that I am, I have to bow out now. I’m a bit disappointed, as it means that I’ll be missing out on the awesome artwork of Damien Worm, but the narrative progression, themes and characters being offered up by writer Steve Niles offer very little to me personally. I can’t get much out of it, and so I’m not going to try to find something that is not there.

That doesn’t mean that I hated the book, because I didn’t. There’s nothing here that greatly offends me, but there’s nothing that illuminates contemporary real-world issues either, and as it’s not exactly a memorable book that leaves me begging for more on a strictly narrative level either, why would I continue to read it?

If you like Tim Burton/Goth kind of stuff then give it a go. You might enjoy it, the art is beautiful, but for me, it’s become a bit blah now. I’ve read four issues, and even though I still admire the art, the story is beginning to wash over me. That’s it. Indifference has set in, and there’s not enough reason to keep this one on my rapidly diminishing wafer thin comic-book pull-list. Goodbye pretty comic book, you were fun, for a while.

Rating: 5/10 (occasionally amusing, great art)