Title: One Bad Day
Volume(s): 1
Creator(s): Steve Rolston
Format: Unflipped; Left-to-Right
Publisher: Oni Press
MSRP: $9.95
Genre(s): Action/Adventure
Rated: Older Teen (16+)
Have you ever had one of those really bad days that you wish had never happened? Of course you have, we’ve all had those bad days that we wish had never happened, but no one has had a bad day like Marie, no sir. Marie is having a normal day (So far). She’s being forced to go to her cousins birthday party (A cousin she could care less for), she’s hanging out with her friend Justin (Who is having girl problems), and everything is as it should be. However things change when someone across the street gets hit by a car, and not just anyone, its one of her old friends Robbie (Who she hasn’t seen since high school, and now he gets run over by a car and put into a coma). And once Robbie gets run over Marie’s luck changes almost instantly.
Throughout the day she will be chased by a bald guy with a gun, two street thugs with a gun, she’ll be sexually harassed by the cab driver, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why she’s basically being hunted like a wild animal. It may sound like this is going to be a deep thriller mystery, but once you reach the end of this (pretty short) book you may be disappointed to find out that Marie’s bad day is no more complicated then she was at the wrong place at the wrong time (And that's the best way I can say it without giving away too much of the ending). This isn’t story telling at its finest. The 116 pages in this book breeze by fast enough where we never get too involved with any of the characters, you we get to know them enough to feel for their plight. You follow me so far? Marie may not have much to do with the grand scheme of this whole plot (The protagonist could have easily been Justin or another character completely), but there is enough of a story for us to care for her.
Here is a girl who is not having any real problems, is doing pretty well for herself, and her biggest problem in the world is having to go to her cousins birthday party. However by the end of the book her life will be changed, she’ll be on the verge of a mental breakdown, and all because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you get to the end of the book you won’t be completely engrossed in Marie’s life, but you will at least feel sorry for her. However I personally want to feel more then sorry for the character, I want to be involved in her life, but the problem is her life and personality is put on hold for the action in this series, and when the whole thing is over you can’t help but feel that the whole thing was rushed. How are we supposed to care about someone who we don’t know? For that matter how are we supposed to believe the story when the ending is so artificial and lame? We feel sorry for her and her plight, but's more of the kind of feeling you get when you hear on the news that someone died in a car crash. You feel sorry for that person, but you feel enough for that person that you'll be effected by their death for more then five minutes.
You can think about that while I contemplate what was up with the color in this book. Yes, the color may just be my biggest problem with the book, an even bigger problem then the underdeveloped story. For some strange reason the whole comic is in green, for no particular reason at all. Why green? Isn’t black ink fine? Did they have some a truckload of green ink that they didn’t know what to do with? Well whatever the reason is, the green does nothing but make the book look washed out. Green may be good for coloring a book when all of the other 26 colors are being used, but it should in no way be the color chosen for inking everything including the text. Chances are the color will most likely scare people away from ever finishing this book. How I finished reading the whole thing with squinted eye’s I’ll never know. I’m not sure what the author was thinking, but I hope he NEVER does this with the inking ever again! “One Bad Day” is not a particularly good book, nor is it particularly bad, it’s just a flawed story that’s asking for more attention and development.
It could be good, but this story feels half-baked, and this is also too short to tell the story that everyone wants to be told. I found this in a bargain bin for $1.49, and at that price it may be worth your while, but in my opinion there are far better things you could spend $10 on.
- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -