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Whispers #1

By Dan Horn
January 12, 2012 - 09:47

One of my favorite comic books of the past five years has to be The Sword by the Luna Brothers. The sibling creative team graduated to a venerable status within the comic book community with their epic tale of a girl who finds a magic sword and launches a vendetta against the super-powered trio that killed her family. When I heard that Joshua Luna was going it alone, sans brother Jonathan, for his next Image Comics project, Whispers, I was excited to see what he could bring to the table on his own.

Whispers #1 kickstarts a surreal saga of a young obsessive compulsive man, Sam, who discovers he has a strange gift: nightly astral projections, which allow him to visit people he knows or has known personally while he sleeps. Sam can't touch anything or be seen by anyone when he's having these out of body experiences, but he seems to be able to speak to the subconsciouses of the people he visits, influencing their thoughts or actions in various ways. Sam begins using his "ghost" form to gain closure in relationships gone awry, but, in at least one instance, instead of achieving closure, he is drawn emotionally deeper into the dangerous life of a girl he once loved. Still, he remains determined to resolve things with another girl, Lily, before the night is through.

Whispers #1 posits an interesting premise, yet the initial installment is straightforward, dry, and, worse, unimaginative. It seemed to me that Sam's OCD and hypochondria were simply novelties, filling space rather than developing Sam's character or being in some way integral to the plot. Luna actually misses a wonderful opportunity to create a contrast between Sam's astral projection, which ostensibly needs not worry about touching pathogen-covered surfaces, and his corporeal existence in which he lives in constant fear of contracting a deadly disease. Luna only briefly mentions the incorporeality of Sam's astral body, seeming to not even notice its immediate significance relative to an obsessive compulsive person.

Also, some of Sam's interactions feel very personal and engaging, while others come across as fabrications. There are some strokes of brilliance when depicting Sam's OCD and hypochondria as well; I just wish all of that had gone somewhere within this first issue. It all felt a bit dismissive, like, "Let me cram as much of this story into the first issue as I can to make sure there's a hook somewhere amongst all this, and I'll develop everything else later." It succeeds in being so dismissive that it evades a discernible aim or pretext: from this issue, Whispers can't be classified as horror, it's not exactly dark fantasy, and it doesn't have the chops for magic realism; it simply is, and it seems a bit soulless, like its main character when he's asleep.

Luna's art in Whispers has a photorealistic quality, and the reception of it depends on personal preference. I know photorealism can be a divisive issue in comic illustration. I'm really not partial to overly photorealistic artwork in comics, especially when the illustrations are quite murky, as they are in Whispers. However, the interiors of this book, if I'm being objective, are gorgeous, and the murk creates an overall continuity throughout the issue and sets a foreboding ambiance. If I'm being subjective, though, this does seem to simply be a vehicle to showcase Joshua's many talents, and I do miss Jonathan Luna's clean, clinical style.

This debut leaves something to be desired, especially following last week's brilliant Fatale #1 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, but the Luna Brothers' Girls had a similarly clunky start, managing to be both cliche and more than a bit on-the-nose. Being a fan of the Lunas, I'm fairly secure in betting that Whispers will eventually develop into something that is the sum of its parts, with immersive, well-written installments outweighing the banalities of its introduction. Even this issue shows a good amount of promise.  It's enough to warrant picking up Whispers #2 for sure.

Rating: 6 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12