STRANGE SCIENCE ONE-SHOT (BY ARCHIE COMICS) – A ONE-SHOT THAT DOESN’T STANDALONE.

Recently hitting the shelves, as part of the Archie Horror releases for Halloween, Strange Science is a one-shot featuring the relatively new characters Jink Holliday and Danni Malloy. They both get drawn into a strange time-travelling dimension when Danni’s rival, Dilton, sends her a message asking for help. Only to find themselves trapped as well.

Technically the issue is fine, good pacing, nice artwork and action, and an interesting idea revolving around time-travel science fiction speculation. What lets this down is it really isn’t a good as a one-shot.

One-shots are normally done in one of two ways. Either they are a jumping on point for new readers, requiring very little prior knowledge of the franchise, characters or stories to get into it. They function like a short story that loosely links to the larger ongoing serial.

The other kind is for the fans, and links heavily off of established canon. Often used to introduce some new characters or setting up other subplots, that will pay off in the ongoing series they are connected to. These are also used to hook new readers who might want to see where the build up is heading. However to help new readers they usually preface the issue with expository text, to help clarify the necessary plots and characters that are needed to understand the events in the one-shot. Though this is somewhat clunky, it is necessary if they want to fit the story they have into a single issue and still attract new readers to not just know what happens next.

This one-shot does neither. These are not new characters and there is no explanation beyond what is gleaned from their dialogue. Dialogue would be the normal way to flesh out a character’s personalities, relationships and past, in an ongoing series, but in a one-shot it only bogs things down. Too much time is spent trying to illustrate who the characters are, there isn’t a lot of time for the actual immediate story they are meant to be telling. Consequently, by the time the conclusion comes around, there isn’t enough investment in the characters to really feel the stakes and enjoy the resolution. Plus, the story itself is shallow and very swiftly resolved, because too much of the issue has been needed to establishing the characters.

This would have been poignant, if I’d actually gotten to know Danni beforehand.

If this had been a two, or three part mini-series, this would have been an okay first issue. The characters still require copious footnotes to really understand who they are and where they came from, to become properly invested in their current struggle. But there would have been more time for that in the first issue, with having another one or two issues to then focus on a complex and interesting conflict or disaster for them to overcome.  It would have given also a lot more room to have a more complex situation than the one told.

As it stands it is a lot of exposition, that still isn’t enough on its own, and a problem so swiftly resolved you’d question if they were ever in and danger to begin with.

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