I'm coming in the middle of the story here, having missed issue one and left halfway through the first Decoy mini-series, but I still think the creators could have met me halfway as far as making the story accessible. There's a lot going on in this book, and most of it only made a little bit of sense to me, while the rest of it left me with a lot of unanswered questions. The art and colors on Decoy are terrific, and Scalera does a nice job of portraying Officer Luck as a sort of likable loser, but there are too many elements of the book that made no sense, and needed much more context.
When you don't even explain the basic concept of the characters anywhere in the issue, you know you're in trouble. I've read just enough Decoy to pick up that Decoy is a friendly alien who has become a friend to Officer Luck, but I don't know much more than that. I'm not sure where he came from, I'm not sure what he does for Luck, I'm not sure who the antagonists are and I'm never sold on why I should care about any of it. Some of the mystery is purposeful, keeping us in the dark as to who the sinister mad doctor is or who the shadowy lurking creatures are, but a lot of it is down to not even explaining the basic concept. Even one of those "Stan Lee Presents" type two-sentence blurbs in the credits would have been a help.
It doesn't help that Scalera's story jumps around quite a bit, or that Huddleston's storytelling early on is a bit shaky. It took me several read-throughs of the opening sequence to figure out that the shadowy creatures were first pulling Decoy and Luck out of a pond, and then they immediately woke up, and then were knocked out again. This is a fairly routine sequence of events, but it's done in the most convoluted manner possible. This is true of much of the story, as the book jumps around, introducing characters and plot elements and moving on before there's any time to explore them.
In terms of artwork, Decoy: Storm of the Century is a winner, even considering a few storytelling flaws. The colors are bright and vibrant, and Huddleston's cartoony style works very well for the somewhat quirky property she has created. I particularly enjoy how Decoy seems to glow, an impressive effect when you consider that the character must be made to somehow stand out from all the others to get this effect, and the "red vs. green" fight at the end is particularly nifty to watch.
Decoy: Storm of the Century has plenty to recommend it, including a likable lead character and some intriguing questions, but for me it was a very frustrating read. It's possible, I suppose, that this feeling is entirely my fault, having come in after the opening credits, as it were, but I suspect that it has more to do with a very inaccessible style being used in the creation of the book.
