JUNCTION JONES AND THE CORDUROY CONSPIRACY #2, from Scout Comics on 5/17/23, find Junction Jones and Mr. Niblets tracking down an unscrupulous carnival boss with ties to the dead man.
The Details
- Written by: T.C. Pescatore
- Art by: Locogonzales
- Letters by: T.C. Pescatore
- Cover art by: Luciano Cruzado
- Comic Rating: Mature
- Cover price: $4.99
- Release date: May 17, 2023
Is It Good?
Let’s get this out of the way immediately. JUNCTION JONES AND THE CORDUROY CONSPIRACY #2 is a tough read. It’s not tough in the sense that it deals with heavy emotional themes our goes to dark places. It’s tough because it’s very difficult to understand what the Hell is going on.
When last we left Junction Jones and Mr. Niblets, they narrowly escaped police capture after finding a dead body in an alley based on a hot tip. Now, Jones uses a telegram in the dead man’s pocket as his lead to finding the killer, and the telegram leads straight to a shady carnival boss named Forshmak Toot.
To T.C. Pescatore’s credit, this series is the oddest (in a good way) take on the downtrodden gumshoe we’ve ever read. Junction Jones perfectly fits the cynical P.I. archetype to a tee, but it’s his partnership with a talking cat and the setting of Junction as a place outside of normal time and space, that makes the concept ripe with potential. As a bonus, all the major plot points are present for a proper detective noir story.
Where does this comic suffer? The big pieces work (concept, setting, character depictions, etc.), but the issue falls apart in the execution and details, particularly with the dialog and the narrative flow.
Toot is forced to tell a flashback story about the dad man’s (Gunny Joel) final hour, and the flashback spirals badly into esoteric nonsense. Toot is on an interdimensional train heading back to Earth in the past, and he’s surrounded by a group of bums, train robbers, bounty hunters, and more eclectic characters. Suddenly, the train is being robbed, but the story flips back and forth to a game called A**HOLE (we think), and the bums jump one of the card players while the bounty hunter starts shooting at the two bank robbers, and then… Oy!
The whole scene, which takes up the main plot of the issue is a chaotic mess, told chaotically, using chaotic, made-up-sounding dialog. What does “hexing reality with presidential decree” mean? What does “graviton sink locked him in his seat. Into a gravity well.” mean? What does “Had to be. heh. 2017. Yuri, yuri. 2017. September-October.” mean? A good chunk of the dialog sounds like an endless stream of nonsensical rambling.
When you put the rambling, nonsense dialog together with a stream of scenes that don’t appear to be in any sequential order, the result is a comic that reads like mostly chaos.
Locogonzales’s B&W art is solid enough. To the art team’s credit, they do what they can to make sense of it all, and it helps in spots. The character designs are distinctive, and the settings are sci-fi cool, so the art team gets a thumbs up.
Keep scrolling for a closer look at the covers, or Click Here to jump right to the story description with some spoilers.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]
Check out our JUNCTION JONES AND THE CORDUROY CONSPIRACY #1 review to find out how Jones and Nibs got into this mess.
We begin with Junction on high alert looking for Jones and Mr. Niblets as suspected criminals of the armed & dangerous variety. In reality, Jones is cool as a cucumber while he sits in the office of one Forshmak Toot – carnival boss, Tarot card reader, and all-around showman.
At first, the meeting is cordial, but Jones gets right to the point. He wants to know how Gunny Joel died. Toot denies any knowledge of the dead man, but Jones produces a damning telegram recovered from Gunny Joel’s body that could get Toot in a lot of trouble.
We conclude the issue with a reluctantly told tale, a double-cross, and a text on an old phone.
Keep scrolling for a closer look at preview images of the internal pages, or Click Here to jump right to the score.
Final Thoughts
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JUNCTION JONES AND THE CORDUROY CONSPIRACY #2 continues the intriguing premise of a detective chasing down a killer. The premise is weirdly interesting due to its setting in time and place, but the issue falls apart with confusing dialog and chaotic panel progression.
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