Kayin and Abeni #3 Review

Writer: Kenan Kornegay, Juni Ba / Artist: Juni Ba / Independent Kayin and Abeni is rekindling my love for comics. Like, for real. This is coming from someone who has read more comics than actual books. Independent creators are the best because they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. And it’s instances like this where that really pays off. Issue #3 is a day in the life type story where the two cousins need to make some quick dough, so they accept a courier job to transfer a space slug to its destination where they’ll get the cash. Setting up a MacGuffin like that is a great way to rope the audience along. This series is still new, but at this point, we care about these characters enough to want them to succeed in their endeavors. It also doesn’t hurt that the space slug (named Slugo) is cute as hell. Because by the end of the issue, you’re really feeling for the lil’ homie as well.

The story is something we’ve seen before, but what makes this issue shine is the dialogue or lack thereof. Ba throws traditional chat bubbles out of the window and relies solely on abstract representations of words and emotions. THIS??IS??BRILLIANT?? Of course, this isn’t the first time a comic has done this. Hell, I just reviewed one a few weeks ago where this was prevalent. But I’ve never seen it done with every character for an entire issue.

Conveying dialogue and emotion in such an abstract way makes things less definitive and more subjective. And by doing that it gives the reader …