{"id":2615,"date":"2025-02-14T13:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T18:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/?p=2615"},"modified":"2025-07-26T15:02:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T19:02:01","slug":"short-box-you-wont-feel-a-thing-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/2025\/02\/14\/short-box-you-wont-feel-a-thing-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Short Box: You Won’t Feel A Thing #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Tula Lota Variant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Release: Jan 15, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover: Dec 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DSTLRY<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creators<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Writer<\/td>Scott Snyder<\/td><\/tr>
Artist<\/td>Jock<\/td><\/tr>
Cover Artist<\/td>Tula Lotay<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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If I include the preview when I post this link to Bluesky it will get labeled as having sensitive content due to the exposed skin in the Tula Lotay cover. This will limit its reach – not that anything I post reaches very far anyway – as many people have set their accounts to hide anything with such a label, and many of them will not bother to take a look behind the door that Bluesky puts between the post and the user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mention this because looking behind the door factors into the narrative contained in this story from writer Scott Snyder and artist Jock which focuses on a man named John Reader, a retired FBI Agent living in an assisted living facility in a place that’s called Harmless but is anything but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doors that are opened – ten of them every morning – are something of a memory exercise for John, who has a tumor growing in his brain. His aide lists a door and gives him a time in his life and asks him what he would see behind the door if he were to open it at that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see that his answers to her aren’t always truthful, particularly when we see the most fateful door-opening in his life when he finds his high school sweetheart – to whom he was planning to propose – brutally murdered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he managed to track down many serial killers in his career, there was one who eluded capture, one no one other than John even believes exists: the man who killed his girlfriend 50 years ago who John has dubbed the “Chatter Man” and thinks can be linked to over thirty killings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As John’s tumor grows and his lapses in memory worsen, matters escalate when the director of the facility is murdered in the same brutal way as the victims of the Chatter Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s an interesting set up, with characteristically great art from Jock, featuring an unintentionally unreliable narrator who, though he doesn’t realize it, is himself a prime suspect, given that two of the victims of the Chatter Man are known to him, and he is the only person who has ever seen the Chatter Man – once, ten years earlier – or even believes that he exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully, it doesn’t go down that obvious route, or if it does it manages to do so in a way that keeps things interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, I’m looking forward to picking up the next issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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