Paranoid Gardens #1 is an engaging introduction to a weird new world
Paranoid Gardens #1 is a wild and wacky comic from Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, Chris Weston, and Dave Stewart. It’s Way’s first non-Umbrella Academy/Killjoys creator-owned work for Dark Horse Comics and follows an amnesiac named Loo working at a retirement home called Paradise Gardens for a man in a cartoon monkey mask named Dr. Bertram Zerc. But Paradise Gardens isn’t your run-of-the-mill retirement home. Along with your usual human senior citizens, there are old folks with insect heads as well as a heat vision wielding superhero, who gets admitted to the Gardens in this issue. Way, Simon, and Weston take their time easing you into this new world before letting the other shoe drop in the final pages, which are symmetrical with the beginning.
Like any good first issue, Paranoid Gardens #1 leaves you with more questions than answers, but an initially confusing first few pages aside, Gerard Way and Shaun Simon’s plot is easy to follow and lets you soak in the strangeness of the environment before heat vision blasts start tearing up the intake lobby. Loo’s amnesia makes her an easy audience surrogate as she and we are experiencing the world for the first time. However, Way, Simon, and Weston give her other character traits like kindness and a sense of humor, which makes her popular with the Gardens residents and her colleagues, but unfortunately not her supervisor Grace, which is every shitty boss you’ve ever had, but with an insect head. For example, she cheers up the Paradise Gardens’ residents with a silly sock puppet show to offset the ageist, unfunny, and frankly creepy ventriloquist that comes in every week. Loo is no ordinary woman and demonstrates power over life and death in two pivotal scenes in the comic, but the best scenes in the comic is when she’s freaking out about the world around her and is comforted by her co-workers. The visions, strange powers, and insect-head boss are all metaphors for trauma and fear. Also, Paradise Gardens is by a cliff, which adds to the precarity of Loo’s mental state.
Obviously, as a huge My Chemical Romance fan, Gerard Way’s involvement was what got me to initially check out Paranoid Gardens #1, but I was also excited to see him collaborate with Chris Weston, who worked on one of the most messed up comics of all time, namely, The Filth with Grant Morrison. Weston has this realistic, kind of Neal Adams/Dave Gibbons style that makes disturbing images more disturbing because it’s like the image is in the same room with you. Take the monkey mask, for example. A more cartoonish art style would evoke twisted nostalgia for old Disney films whereas Chris Weston’s style drives home the fact that the doctor at your grandmother’s retirement home is connected to some Mousketeer cult and will do anything for immortality. Stewart’s colors add to this eeriness with vivid reds, blues, and greens standing out when Loo has visions of her past and freaks out.
From his work on The Umbrella Academy, Doom Patrol, and even the Danger Days album and True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys comics, Way definitely has demonstrated a passion for the superhero genre, which is why it isn’t surprising that an unnamed superhero makes an appearance in Paranoid Gardens. However, he, Simon, and Weston just use this character as one ingredient in a surreal psychological thriller with body horror elements. (The mysterious, clammy ooze that Grace pokes and prods.) The superhero’s connection to Loo (Even triggering her to remember her actual name.) is more important than cool powers and fisticuffs, and he adds an air of danger to the Paradise Gardens. He’s the blunt force to the mad science and conspiracies of Dr. Zerc, who is just as much of an enigma as Loo.
Paranoid Gardens #1 is an engaging introduction to a weird new world crafted by Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston. They ground the narrative in a young woman’s literal struggle with identity and trying to do well at a new job before making it soar with the aforementioned flights of fancy like visions, insectoid people, and doctors that put on monkey masks and maybe were part monkey in the past. This psychological mystery aspect plus having a likable protagonist in Loo definitely has me locked in for the rest of the series.
Story: Gerard Way, Shaun Simon Art: Chris Weston
Colors: Dave Stewart Letters: Nate Piekos
Story: 8.0 Art: 8.6 Overall: 8.3 Verdict: Buy
Dark Horse Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review.
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