Neal, Andrew – Gone Ghost: A Val Cannon Mystery

Website

Gone Ghost: A Val Cannon Mystery

Should Meeting Comics change into nothing but Val solving mysteries? I mean, I like the rest of the cast too much to wish for that to happen completely (this comic flashes back to 1996, so only one other member of the modern crew is still around), but I certainly wouldn’t mind if it became a regular thing. This is set a few months after the events of Val’s last mystery (Where the Rent Went), and it’s at a Halloween party, which is a setting that’s always just full of possibilities. The mystery itself takes several pages to get going, but before that we get the joy of seeing Val’s roommates set boundaries with her (the five of them want Val all to themselves; she had been going outside the house for sex and agrees to go “steady” with them only) and an incident with a raccoon in an attic. It also nicely sets up an issue-long problem, one that is rare for a sex machine like Val: she’s blocked from sex at every turn, by an increasingly ridiculous series of events, in the funniest bit of the comic. Eventually we find out (through a cop stopping by her Halloween party) that there’s a missing woman and he’s hoping she can help out, since she’s famous from her last successful solving of a mystery. As always, this issue is packed with details, from the various costumes sprinkled throughout (some time sensitive to the 90’s, some not) to the fun of trying to spot the missing woman in the background. Here’s as close to a spoiler as I’ll get: she was at the party all along! Andrew was also nice enough to send along his “making of” zine for this issue, and if you’re interested in his process, I can’t recommend it enough. Bits that didn’t fit, his artistic process, a comic from him in 1996 about a story that took place at the house that inspired Val’s old house with all the roommates, just a fascinating pile of information. If you’re wondering if I’m recommending this, it should be obvious by now, but yeah, it’s not like Andrew suddenly lost his touch since the last issue. And it’s self-contained, so you don’t have to read all the older issues of Meeting Comics (even though you should, assuming you like to laugh). Maybe get Val’s two mystery issues, and if you like those, branch off from there to the rest of the series. $7

Posted on May 25, 2023, in Reviews and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a Comment.

Comments are closed.