By Keigen Rea — Welcome to Rereads: end of the year edition! I love doing end of year lists, so I’m using this space to do that, but I didn’t want it to just be my end of year list, because that didn’t quite fit what I want Rereads to be, so there’s a small twist. The books featured won’t necessarily be my favorite books of the year, they’ll be books that I wasn’t totally sure the first time around, or they'll be books I want to revisit before I make my final favorites of the year list. Naturally, that means all of these books won’t actually be on my list, and I might even dislike some of them! As always, though, I hope I come away liking these books more than I did before.

This week’s Rereads, are Afterlift, by Chip Zdarsky, Jason Loo, Paris Alleyne, and Aditya Bidikar, edited by Allison O’Toole, published by Comixology and Crowded Vol 2: Glitter Dystopia, by Ro Stein & Ted Brandt, Triona Farrel, Christopher Sebela, Cardinal Rae, and edited by Juliette Capra, logo by Dylan Todd, color flatting by Katie O’Meara and Holley Mckend, published by Image.

Why Afterlift?

This year has been a big year for Chip, but maybe moreso it’s been a big year of me enjoying Chip. He’s got multiple series that could be on my end of year list, and in different capacities. For whatever reason, though, I just didn’t really like Afterlift the first time around. I think there were some pacing issues and for whatever reason the whole thing just didn’t click for me. I read it monthly, so technically I read a bit of it last year, but with the trade out, I’m excited to experience the story all at once, and hopefully it’ll land this time for me.

Pre-Reread Thoughts

I don’t really have any this time? I know I wasn’t very fond of the way the series uses double page spreads, and I think the final season of The Good Place affected my read of this, so maybe I’ll lean all the way into that and see where it takes me!

Afterlift

Turns out, I do think this does some similar stuff as The Good Place, but in good ways!

First though, I want to highlight a bit of weirdness with the format of the book. It’s weird that the single issues just don’t exist anymore? I guess I get it, why offer them that way when you made a collected version, but it’s still just weird. A thing I do like that’s related to this is how the collected edition is presented like a graphic novel, with the covers all at the end, not acting as chapter breaks. I didn’t have anything against chapter breaks, but this is a short enough story that it feels fine to just read it in one sitting. All around, I like the presentation, even if it’s odd that it feels like it’s erasing the way it was initially released.

Now for The Good (Place) stuff. Something that I don’t think I appreciated when Afterlift was releasing is how it uses its core concept, but it isn’t satisfied with sticking with just the basic premise. Once they pass the midway, the driveshare part of the story is pretty much left behind, even if it is still interesting and could have been milked a bit more. This could be a complaint, but leaving a good idea before it’s exhausted is something I can appreciate, and I think leads to brave storytelling choices in Afterlift’s case. It doesn’t get a lot of use out of the rideshare stuff, but it does get to talk about individual belief systems and forgiveness which is always welcome to me!

But whew, what really hit me this time was the ending. While The Good Place is my favorite show of the year, really my favorite show full stop, I do get that the ending isn’t for everyone, and hurts people. While Istill do enjoy it, I think Afterlift does what The Good Place was trying to do, and does it better. It’s a strong end cap that emphasizes personal choice, ability, imagination, and the way we can all help one another. It’s an ending that uses the metaphor of death to explain how we can help ourselves and each other, and does so in a beautiful way. I’m happy it exists in print and digital, where the greatest number of people can enjoy it.

Now for Crowded!

Why Crowded?

Crowded is already a series that totally changed based on a reread, so in some ways this is going to be a comfort read. It’s one of the series I’m looking at this month that has a real chance of ending up on my actual year end list too.

Pre-Reread Thoughts

I want to pay attention to the density of the single issues, even if I’m reading them all together, because that’s one of the things that I’ve changed my opinion on since my initial read. I know I found each issue to be really dense both in word count and panel count, so I think I’ll try to dissect that.

Crowded Vol 2 Glitter Dystopia

Okay, guess I’m just gonna talk a bunch about panel density because I love it and Crowded is a perfect example of a series successfully playing with the idea.

Here’s a breakdown of each issue’s panels per page and the total average.

Issue 7: 151 panels, 26 pages, 5.8 panels/page

8: 137/24, 5.7

9: 141/24, 5.87

10: 117/22, 5.3

11: 122/24 5.08

12: 147/26 5.65

Vol 2 as a whole: 815/146, 5.58

Now, that’s not nearly as high as I thought it’d be! I thought the average would be at least 6, if not closer to 7. Which is silly, when some issues of Watchmen clock in around 7 panels/page! To put Crowded’s panel density into perspective, let’s look at two other more recent series, though, Saga and The Wicked + The Divine. I just picked one random issue of each to compare.

Saga issue 46: 99/22, 4.5

Saga is on the extreme low end when it comes to panel density, which is wild, because it’s one of the best paced comics I can think of. Crowded has a similar number of pages and has a whole panel over it, which to me, speaks to intent more than anything else. To me, Saga is built to work better as a whole than it does in parts, with the individual issues working harder to keep readers coming back than they do to deliver a complete experience. Crowded, especially this volume, takes a different approach.

While Glitter Dystopia is made up of six single issues, it’s more like two 3 issue arcs in one volume, which is why each issue needs 22-26 more panels per issue than Saga. It’s telling more story per issue. If anything, I’m impressed they didn’t have to lean on higher panel counts more often than they did.

Now, this issue of WicDiv maaaaybe wasn’t the best one to compare, but whatever, it was random and I think it’s an interesting comparison, and points to one of Crowded’s strengths.

The Wicked + The Divine 28: 121/23, 5.26

So, this issue is just a little bit lower, which makes sense. WicDiv is a panel dense series, one that frequently uses seven or eight panel pages multiple times throughout the issue, and is largely built on an eight-panel grid. I think this issue is particularly interesting, though, because it has THREE separate splash pages, and when you take them out, the panel/page (obviously) skyrockets to 5.9! Which again, is actually pretty typical for WicDiv, as it knows how to use splash pages, but oftentimes that means other parts of the issue have to be more dense.

What’s interesting is that Crowded is not really like this at all. It’s not tied to any kind of grid, and has only used two splash pages throughout the series, from what I can tell. It often will drop to 3 or 4 panel pages and give one emphasis over the others instead, which adds panels to the count. In a good way!

All of this also allows this volume to do fun stuff with layouts, like the page below…

It’s a twelve panel page, with speech balloons in every panel, and I love it. It’s perfectly readable, has so many words but flows well, has rhythm, and isn’t formal by any means. There are more imaginative pages in this volume, but this, to me, is one that shows exactly how in control and in tune the whole creative team is on this series. They pull off every page and panel, but it’s not tied to any form that’s been done before. Crowded is a comic that’s about using the medium to do something new and different and it succeeds.

This week’s rereads are not dedicated to the following things, but I highly encourage all to buy them if they’re so inclined. First is the current bundle of holding, (https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Spire) which is selling the ttrpg Spire at a ridiculous discount. Get on it, then invite me to play, or someone you like, whatever.

The other is God-Puncher vol 1 by Lane Lloyd (https://gumroad.com/l/RxxJv) which I just obtained and am dying to dig into. Pick it up, like other smart people that I know (me)!

That’s it for this week’s Rereads, which I’ll call doubly successful! Come back later this week for Amazing Mary Jane and Sex Criminals!

Reread some of Keigen’s Rereads columns here!

Keigen Rea has three weeks til winter break. It will be good. Find him @prince_organa on Twitter.