Review: ‘The Cull’ #2 starts to reveal the world beyond the cave
After the debut issue set up an interesting concept and did a lot of character development, THE CULL #2 finds our characters exploring the new world they’ve stumbled upon, meeting new species, and making some questionable decisions.
PUBLISHER’S PITCH
Cleo's confession elicits more fear than anger from the group, and everyone sticks together into the great unknown. Sentient mushrooms for everyone!
REVIEW
Kelly Thompson carries the momentum created by her first issue and gives us a closer look at the mystery and wonder of this new world. Where she focused the previous issue on developing individual characters, she spends this issue looking at group dynamics and how they are handling the uncertainty of their current situation. We get to see some characters take on leadership roles, most notably Cleo, as they decide to keep going forward and exploring this new land.
After seeing some strange new species and wondering whether or not they’re in a parallel universe they’ll ever escape, the group decides to…split up to use the rest room? Every horror movie fan knows you don’t split up. I was shouting at the pages during these scenes, just waiting for something bad to happen. Instead, we get two intimate moments with two sets of characters. Kaite and Cleo share an emotional moment before making out, while Lux and Will have full blown sex in the middle of the sci-fi jungle. Keeping with the horror theme, my mind immediately went to the scene in The Cabin in the Woods where we find out the characters were being influenced to act stupidly and get their freak on in order to make their eventual deaths easier. I’m hoping that’s similar to what happens here because these scenes felt really off from the rest of the book’s tone.
I loved Mattia De Iulis’ art in the first issue but had a more varied reaction to it in this issue. On the positive, the depth and details in the visuals for this mysterious environment and it’s inhabitants are breathtaking and the color palette to to match is perfect. The human character designs in this issue felt off compared to the first book. I’m not sure if that was intended, given the new world warping things, but there were certain panels where a character’s face looked AI generated.
FINAL VERDICT
With only three issues left, there’s still a long way to go from where we are to where things end based on the teaser in the first issue. Hopefully Thompson won’t have to rush the plot along to get use from point A to point B because I find her character work (minus the random hookups in this issue) to be strong, though I am really interested to see the world start falling apart. I worry we’re about to get a lot thrown at us in a short amount of time or be left with a major cliffhanger.
