Gideon Falls Volume 3:  Stations of the Cross

I really shouldn’t have liked this at all. We’re now deep into the free-fall of crazy and splintering of timelines into various universes that I usually can’t stand. All too often this strikes me as just being lazy storytelling, a way of giving up on creating a coherent plot and pulling the rug out from the reader whenever you want to introduce some new element.

But I thought this volume of Gideon Falls the best yet. Yes, our heroes are skipping around in time and space, but instead of everything breaking apart the sense that’s given is of things coming together, and doing so in interesting and visually striking ways. It seems Andrea Sorrentino was being given more freedom to open things up as things went along, and he’s using that freedom in a fiercely creative way.

The first few issues collected here introduce us to a slightly new character: Father, then Bishop, Burke. I say slightly new because he’d been previously glimpsed in the background. Here he gets a lot more development as he’s shown to be on the trail of Norton Sinclair, who is possessed or being controlled by the Laughing Man/Bug God. And it’s a trail that’s so crooked, branching through different dimensions and timelines, that Burke even has to grab a pen and paper at one point to draw a map. Though I had to wonder what use that might be.

As Bishop Burke he also has a team of priests to help him out. This was the only part of the story where I still felt out of the loop. If the Bug God is some alien force of evil, what is its hang-up with Christian symbolism? Why does he crucify people, and why are the people who are fighting him so fixated on having God on their side? Maybe this will all be explained, but for now it left me scratching my head.

What we do know, now, is that the Bug God needs a human body to function as a master key to unlock a gateway to other dimensions, including our own. He figured Danny would fill this role but as things leave off here he’s found a substitute in Danny’s dad. Creepy stuff! I’m enjoying this series quite a bit and looking forward to what’s next.

Graphicalex