I feel bad giving Sky Between Branches such a low grade, because it doesn't really reflect the enthusiasm I have for future issues of the book. But this particular issue fails on almost every count except for providing a momentary "wow that's purty" feeling, and that's not quite enough for me to justify a three dollar purchase when there's so much else out there. I expect to come away from this kind of issue with some sense of what the actual series is about, but instead I'm greeted with little more than a sketchbook and a brief sample of artwork. The artwork is simply beautiful, possibly the best artwork to be found in any comic this week, but it could have used more substance to back it up.
Middleton stood out amongst the early Crossgen artists as one to watch, and his work here is leaps and bounds beyond what he did on his early issues of Meridian. The storytelling is strong, the detail is incredible and the color work puts me in mind of Bjarne Hansen or Matt Hollingsworth's work on some of the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale projects. This is lush, gorgeous artwork, with plenty of attention paid to small moments and developing the setting and some of the most beautiful figure work I've seen. It's hard not to look at this and think or say "wow."
Eddie Deighton has done the same level of quality work on the design, lettering and production values of the piece. The sound effects that fade into the backgrounds, and the words that exist on the page without balloons, are unusual methods of expressing common comic-book storytelling devices, and they stand alongside the art as something different. They help to give the book it's unusual, ethereal flavor. And the book, though light in page count, uses heavy cardstock covers and quality paper that makes the artwork really shine.
If only the writing were of the same caliber. Actually, it's not really fair to say that the writing isn't, because in this package we're not given much of a chance to sample it. There are a total of 10 pages of sequential art in this book, and the storytelling is of a decompressed manga style, which means that it is the equivalent of about two pages of your average comic in how much happens. I'm at an utter loss to tell you what Sky Between Branches might be about. And if this was meant as simply a teaser, I could accept that if Middleton had used some of the sketch pages to provide textual insights into characters, setting, plot or anything else that might give a hint of what the book is going to be.
I'll be honest... the artwork on this book is so good that I'll probably be back for issue one, even though I have no idea what I'm getting into. But I still feel a bit peeved that I spent three dollars on such a fluffy piece of promo material, when I was expecting something more along the lines of an actual comic for that price.
