After my disappointment with Hard Time and general skepticism about the Focus line in general, the last thing I expected was to really enjoy Kinetic, the second Focus book. However, Puckett and Pleece have done a fantastic job in this first issue of portraying an 18-year-old who has grown up with such a variety of degenerative diseases that he's never been able to be normal. Puckett's script taps into the universal feeling of being alienated and different in one's teen years but at the same time, he also takes it to such an extreme that there's a deep sense of tragedy and the unusual to it as well. Pleece's artwork, with the unusual color palette set up for Focus by Brian Haberlin overlying it, provides a distinctive and beautiful look to the book as well.
The pitch for the Focus line was something along the lines of "superpowers in the real world." Kinetic has none of the former, but plenty of the latter, as it focuses entirely on setting up our protagonist and the life he has been saddled with. Puckett's story is paced out slowly in some regards, but it isn't slow by any means. The opening scene, showing the difficulty of Tom to do something as mundane as shaving, not to mention the terrified, protective way that his mother acts with him, tells us everything we need to know about his life. The rest of the story, showing Tom dealing with his school life, just reinforces that he's never been able to feel the least bit normal.
What's worse about Tom's life isn't just that he's been forced into an existence betrayed by his own body, but that he doesn't really seem to have anyone who can understand it. His mother can hardly be called overprotective given the frail nature of her son, but she seems to be focused on his physical well-being with a surprising lack of ability to understand his psychological well-being. The substitute teacher is likewise just genially clueless, rather than outwardly cruel, and even the casual teasing of the other students isn't as brutal as you'd expect in a high school. The notion that Tom has spent eighteen years without some kind of support in his life is a little bit of a stretch, but the inability of people to see through someone else's eyes is certainly common enough that I had no trouble swallowing it for the sake of the story.
If Puckett's script is essential to conveying Tom's life, though, Pleece is left with the all-important task of conveying Tom's mental state. All too many artists would have given Tom an expression that looked angry and sullen, but Pleece hits a more subtle level. Tom isn't just angry, he's not just depressed... he's worn down. He's been dealing with these things for so long that every single minute of every day just wears on him. The pleasant surprise when he first meets Angela, or the joy he takes when he has successfully had one encounter where he didn't come off as a freak, are perfectly clear, and destroyed in horrifying detail in the sequence that follows in the next few pages. Pleece's artwork is terrific here, with a quality reminiscent of Cameron Stewart, and I continue to really enjoy the unusual, high color highlights that Haberlin is using for his colors on the Focus line.
Kinetic does start slowly, which is where the strength of Tom's character comes from but also has the flaw of not really telling readers what the book is about. The actual premise of the book is only barely touched upon in this issue, and so I'm left wondering if the rest of the series will be as strong, given that there's obviously a significant shift in story elements coming. However, this is a good foundation, and certainly has a lot to offer those looking for comics that are a little off the beaten path.
