The Suicide Squad: Negative Space #1 Review

Negative Space is a new comic written by Ryan K. Lindsay, creator of Headspace and Fatherhood (you can find our review of Headspace here), and it is not your typical comic. It follows a depressed author who wants to kill himself, but gets writers block when trying to create his suicide note. His ineptness kick-starts a discovery of a shadowy corporation that thrive on manipulating the actions of people.

As you can tell, this sounds like The Adjustment Bureau meets The Cabin In The Woods. To be honest, the comic does feel like that as you read it. It is an interesting storyline and one that is looking very promising. There is of course the inevitability of things not going smoothly and the writer discovering things he shouldn’t. It is these enigmas that make the first issue so interesting. But, the interest of the mysteries is the only thing that would keep me reading the series.

The first issue is very sluggish. You cannot feel sympathy towards the main character and the handling of his emotional slum is poorly done. The corporation is slightly explored for about 1/3 of the comic and that can be painful to get through because the main focus is someone who would seem to be more suited to be in an episode of Entourage.

As mentioned, things of course go wrong for the main character, who’s already suicidal, and what happens to him is very similar to that of what happened to Matt Murdock in the Born Again story arc. While that comic keeps your interest and makes the trauma saddening, it just comes off as aesthetically pleasing here.

The front cover art is very falsely-advertising what you can expect from this comic. It is not supernatural, and in fact only touches the surface of the universe on show here. That cover would definitely be more fitting for the second or third issue. The artwork in the issue itself isn’t particularly my cup of tea. The sketching is almost like a draft version and the characters don’t look too good as a result of it. It’s subversive, but not particularly great.

The comic could easily explore themes of consumerism and the control of capitalism. But instead, doesn’t really explore them here and leaves a good route undiscovered. It would have made the comic completely different but I think adopting an intellectual stance might help this comic come into its own a lot more.

I will probably read the second issue simply because of how this one ends but I just don’t think it’s worth your time. This issue was okay, and the series has promise to become a lot better, but currently it just hasn’t managed to establish itself as a comic worth reading.