I never watched Twin Peaks or Picket Fences, and if I actually had to live in some small hicktown, I think I'd probably wind up killing myself. So Runoff, the offbeat tale of weirdness in a small hick town, went in with some strikes against it and came out with me chomping at the bit to read the next one. Manning tells a story of a weird cosmic event that sets everyone's nerves on edge, throws in some half-explained old grudges with the Indian reservation to the north and a guy whose idiosyncrasies seem to include axe murder and presents something weird, funny and very compelling. It's become a cliche to use the word "quirky" to describe this sort of project, but damn it, Runoff is quirky, in the good sense of the word, and I'm anxious to see where Manning takes the story from here.
It's all too easy, when building these sorts of casts of characters, to go either too cliche or too out there, but Manning avoids the pitfalls and creates a very memorable and enjoyable cast. The Mayor, whose crotchety old personality seems to hide a sharp political mind, always delights, as does his opportunistic (and dumb) would-be opponent. The two coroners, whose giddy delight at discovering the freak of nature they name "Mr. Teeth," come across as off-kilter but in a relatively normal way. At least, normal when compared to truck driver Gus and his brother Mort, whose ownership of a bizarre helper monkey named Siva is the most normal thing about him. And Liz, the waitress, and the family she takes in, are a nice grounding of normalcy amidst the chaos. That doesn't even cover everyone... whatever else you've got to say about Manning, he knows how to build an interesting cast of characters.
He also knows how to build a mystery. The notion of a town being sealed off by a mysterious force, with people unable to leave but perfectly able to come in, is a really nifty little horror premise, one of those things that isn't as outright creepy as monsters or murders but has an unsettling horror to it as you start to think about it happening to you. In addition, Manning has clearly put some thought into the setting, an island in a river on which exists the small town of Range and the Snoquomish Indian reservation is a pretty interesting place for this kind of mystery. Being trapped on Manhattan? Well, that'd be one kind of story. But being trapped in this kind of bizarre small town is something quite different.
Where Runoff has some failings is largely in terms of the artwork. If you compare the short feature at the back of the book to the rest, you can see that Manning has already had huge improvements, and I have no doubt that his art will soon be the equal of his writing. It's just not there yet. His storytelling is mostly clear (although sometimes a little confusing on the chaotic action sequences), but his figure work and backgrounds are somewhat rough and uneven. However, that said, there are two aspects of the art that really shine for me: One is his character designs, which when they're on a really good page or on the cover, have a lot of character to them and remind me at times of a guy like Scott Morse. The other is a dead-on match for Berke Breathed's style, used to good effect for some of the sequences, which extends not just to the art but to the writing style. A Bloom County style strip in the midst of the story would seem at first blush to be a weird idea, but it actually works really well and adds a little more of the quirky fun that the book won me over with.
My other complaint with Runoff is that when I pick up a graphic novel, I'd really like it to be an entire story, unless it's some grand epic that really requires more than one volume to tell. There's no failure of pacing here, and indeed I don't know if Manning could have worked as much character and humor into the book if he'd had less room, but I was unpleasantly surprised to get to the end of Runoff and realize that there was going to be a "to be continued..." That said, the book is entertaining enough that I'll definitely be back around for another volume.
