Royal City #12
Image Comics
Written By: Jeff Lemire
Art By: Jeff Lemire
Lettered By: Steve Wands
We’re winding down here with Royal City, and Jeff Lemire gives us a great issue. It focuses mainly on Olive, who has just shown up in Patrick’s life, and goes through quite a journey here. We’re given this great setup where Olive is brought over to the Pike family home, and she eventually comes across something of Tommy’s. With this she goes through this journey by herself, and it feels like she trying to get to know Tommy while at the same time, find some closure for herself in all of this. It certainly would be difficult to figure out what kind of person your father was when you’ve never met him, and I enjoy this method of trying to reach out to him.
Tommy’s story continues just a bit more in this issue too after the confrontation that occurred in the last issue. It’s not very long and he doesn’t say much here. I think you can understand what’s going on in his head. So much of this issue is very quiet. We’re mostly running through memories, but even though words aren’t exchanged, you can hear these characters screaming. You see either anger, fear, sadness, or love. To me, that’s where it pulls you in. You need to just sit there and think about what they’re going through, and what’s going through their minds in these moments.
The art from Jeff Lemire has been something that I find myself really appreciating. Some of the panels do a great job giving off how the characters are feeling, and I think some of the close-up panels with Olive are some of my favorite from this series. The panel work is simple and has one moment where they have fun with the way one of the pages panel’s flow through, but what’s shown here works really well. Throughout this run we have seen secrets being kept from each other and lies being told among other things that just keep these characters really down on each other. The end of this issue even as sad as it really is, a smile is personally left for Olivia, as she seems to be the only person here that is really trying to move forward about Tommy. Royal City presents us another great issue where the ride is all for a specific moment in the end and I’d say it delivers.