Throughout my reviews of this series, I expressed an admiration for the level of craft and the general level of talent on the part of all involved, but had reservations that prevented me from wholeheartedly recommending the book. Having seen the whole book completed and given a chance to reread it all together, I can now say unequivocally that I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I couldn't have been more wrong if my head had been sewn on backwards. I still might have a minor characterization quibble and I still might wish that Quitely had more clearly explained a couple of key moments, but the general look and feel of We3 is just about perfect, and the emotional connection it makes surprisingly deep for what is essentially a high-concept weirdness/big action story. I find that in reading this book again, my heart goes out to its three animal leads, but even moreso, my brain can't stop enjoying watching them kick ass.
The approach taken here has some dark humor based in the seemingly absurd concept of cute pet animals wired into mechanical instruments of death, but the general approach is really more of a cross between surreal horror and ultraviolence, reminiscent of the comics work of Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow on Hard Boiled or the films of Darren Aronofsky and David Cronenberg (if they were being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.) It's a horror story, a brutal examination of what mankind does to animals because we feel superior to them, a criticism of the scientific use of lab animals couched in bloody, violent chaos. It is also an unapologetic action movie in which a pissed-off cat takes down an attack helicopter in a fit of pique, or a rabbit puts a dent in an adversary with his metal techno-poop bomb. It's strange, but it never veers into over-the-top comedy, instead winking at the audience every now and then to remind us that yes, there is some silliness here, but the characters are ones we're supposed to connect to on a real emotional level, and the action is supposed to look cool as well as a little disturbing.
In capturing the bestial nature of his protagonists, Morrison made reading the book a somewhat alien experience, and Quitely's scattershot panel approach, also emulating the viewpoint of the animal leads, also could have seemed (and did seem) off-putting. Giving it a second look, however, I realize that the panel-to-panel flow is not nearly as confusing as I thought it was, but instead a sort of focused, microscopic approach to storytelling. The chaotic escape in the first chapter is not a blur of disjointed panels, but about a half-dozen parallel story tracks following a single story in daunting 18-panel pages. The same hyper-exaggerated examination of moments takes place in the animals' attack on their pursuers in the second issue, and while it requires a more focused reading than most books on the market, it's more rewarding as well. I still found one key element, exactly what Roseanne Berry did to enable the escape of the animals, remarkably unclear, but the gist is there, at any rate.
At any rate, Quitely's work here is amazing. The storytelling, using close-in shots of people's feet, views from within walls and vents and security camera footage, is a bold experiment that I think, in retrospect, really pays off. Even if you're not down with the strange storytelling, though, you've got to give it up to Quitely for his amazing designs of the animals, which conveys their technological superiority and the sad, horrific nature of their mutilation simultaneously. And there are so many powerful panels in here, such as the attack of the cat on the final adversary or the arrival of the rat biorgs or the sacrifice of Dr. Berry, that it's impossible not to be taken into the story by the visuals alone.
Another aspect of the book that didn't work for me as well in single issues but which, for some reason, just "clicked" with me in trade, was the communication system used by the three animals. I always thought it was an excellent way to convey their basic primal nature and differences from one another, but I hadn't realized just how much personality the characters had or how much storytelling there was in that dialogue previously. The struggle for dominance between 1 and 2, and that they both wind up backing each other up when the chips are down, is a vitally important part of the story that just sailed past my consciousness upon initial reading. In addition, the way that Morrison gives the characters, especially the dog, such sympathetic personalities makes us root for them and hope for a happy ending that nobody expects is coming.
We3 is a compelling piece of work, worthy of all the hype that it has received. I don't know why it took until it was collected in trade form for me to fully appreciate it, but this is definitely one of those landmark comic achievements that every fan should read at some point in their comics-reading history. It can be a little obtuse, but the book rewards reader attention with an action-horror story that has plenty of heart as well. 10/10
