Spoilers

Written by Gail Simone

Art by Jon David-Hunt

Cover art by Jenny Frison

“Spring Cleaning Part One”

Welcome to the Daily Read. This is going to be a new semi-regular column at EYG where we take a comic series and we read an issue a day, every day until we finish the run. Much like the DailyView where we watch a movie a day, this will be reading a comic.

I was inspired to do this by a series that I picked up on eBay this past week. I had been interested in the latest rebirth of DC Comics’ Vertigo line. These new books are intriguing and I will be picking them up. Meanwhile, I was on Blue Sky recently and Gail Simone (or someone who was responding to her) brought up a series called Clean Room. I had never heard of it before so I went to eBay and found the whole 18-issue series. It had debuted in December 2015 and I decided to order it.

I have been a huge fan of Gail Simone’s work on the Uncanny X-Men recently, and I have been looking into other work that she had done in comics. I was able to meet her at the SiouxCon this past September and get her to sign some books. I purchased a comic script she had written for Savage Wolverine #19, which was so cool.

So I wanted to read this series, but I have a busy schedule and it is difficult to make time for things. That is… unless I am doing a column about it. This led to me creating the Daily Read in order to make sure that I carve out the time needed to read the series.

I read issue one this afternoon and I was fully engaged with it. It started out with a frightening scene with a little girl and an angry man driving a truck. For a moment, I thought this book was starting out with something truly tragic, but the little girl survived only to ask a creepy question: “Mama, why is Papa’s face made of snakes?”

We then meet Chloe, who is on a mission to discover what she could about Astrid Mueller. Mueller had written a self-help book that led to Chloe’s husband’s death (I am not sure if it was explicitly said, but it certainly implied that he had taken his own life).

Chloe’s path in just this first issue was rough as she seemingly tried to drown herself, only to be rescued. She decided on her path to find out why Philip, her husband, died.

Meanwhile, we do not meet Astrid Mueller until the final page, but the book does a great job of setting this woman up as something horrendous, even comparing her to Satan. The story does a sensational job of creating an aura around this character before we see her walk into the scene.

After reading the first issue, I confirmed that I wanted to do this Daily Read on EYG. I have decided that this series is very much worth the time that I will need to commit to read it and write about it. I love it when a series is clever and creative and makes me think about what is going on, and, so far, Clean Room has succeeded in that.

I will be reading an issue a day for the next 17 days and posting my thoughts about it.