This is a weird little comic. Not really in terms of genre or tone, because it's basically a slice-of-life tale about living a rough life and getting by on the fringes, but in terms of the way the story plays out. Solis spends a good amount of time introducing characters and introducing us to protagonist Olga's life, only to wind everything up very quickly in a couple of pages. It's a little unsatisfying as a story, but it's fascinating as an art object, and Solis's art style only helps to make that case. Solis's art is very reminiscent of Andi Watson (who handles the intro for the book) in style, but his characters have a more stretched and less sharp look to them that makes it subtly different while not losing the visual appeal and classic minimalism that Watson has. As the introduction to a new artistic talent, One Step After Another is pretty good; as a standalone story, it's entertaining but ultimately comes up a little short.
One Step After Another follows the life of Olga, an 18-year-old girl with unspecified problems in her past that landed her in a religious juvenile center. Her lifepath lands her in a harsh dead-end job in a sewing factory, but she finds herself tempted away from this existence by the free-spirited Lucia. The story doesn't get much deeper than that. There's a crucial plot twist which is hinted at pretty heavily throughout, but only revealed on the last page and then not given any context, and so Olga is left a bit of a cipher. It's hard to care too much about her except on the general human level of thinking nobody should have to deal with this much crap just to get by.
However, while Solis's odd pacing left me unsatisfied in the end, I have to admit that it made for a somewhat compelling read throughout. One Step definitely doesn't move down any predictable path, and the life that Olga leads feels more natural and real than that of more plot-driven characters. Her friendship with Lucia strikes up fairly quickly, but Lucia's quirks make it easy to believe that she would make fast friends, and the dichotomy between the two, brash versus timid, makes for some fascinating story moments. I also quite enjoyed Olga's run-in with a young man from a food store, which serves again to illustrate that Olga is more trusting and more friendly than she probably ought to be.
The big selling point of One Step, at least for me, is the artwork. I am a huge fan of the style of Andi Watson, and at a casual glance, one could easily mistake Solis's work for that of Watson. The amount of clear shading that is done with simple grays, the stark background designs that have just enough props and detail to suggest everything you need to know, even the lettering style reads very much like Watson's work. However, Solis has some stylistic quirks that mark his work as different from Watson's, most obvious in his character designs for Olga, her boss and Lucia. Each of these characters has a look that suggests their basic personality, from the sinister, permanently scowling face of Olga's boss to the angular, somewhat plain and innocent look of Olga to the fox-like features of the playful Lucia.
Just when I thought I knew where One Step was headed, Solis offers up a surprisingly happy ending, and one that brings to light a truth I had suspected about Olga since about halfway into the issue. Unfortunately, this happy ending is somewhat at odds with the more realistic tone of the book and the theme of the story up to that point, and more to the point, it feels more like the surprise twist at the middle of the story than the big reveal at the end. As a cliffhanger ending leading into a second issue, the ending is still rushed but perhaps more acceptable. As the end of what is presumably a one-shot, it's a left turn from the rest of the book that feels more than a little trite and easy. 7/10
