Review by Frank Plowright
This second Yearbook again combines three paperbacks, and picks up a year after events ending Yearbook Edition 1. It’s a viable method of change, and the most obvious example is seen early. Karen Jacobs, once timid and uncertain, is now an incredibly accomplished killer of wild beasts. Why she transformed can be guessed by her actions ending the previous volume, and either directly or indirectly she prompts much of what happens to the main cast, either in the new present or the past when that cast were still at high school in Wisconsin, not on an alien planet.
The other major element is the Horde, referred to in secretive and fearful tones when mentioned at all. James Tynion IV now places them up front and central, but cleverly. All that’s needed to establish them is a leader, their technology and the creatures they control. Why they’re so feared is duly explained, and their origin is smart in tying into the idea of other humans abducted to the wooded planet in the past.
Defining the Horde’s particular technology is an artistic highlight from Michael Dialynas, and it’s something that’s definitively his. So are the character moments. The Woods moves at a hell of a pace, so it’s important feelings and reactions connect immediately, and Dialynas is extremely thoughtful about visual emotion. The alien environment, though, requires colourist Josan Rodriguez for the full effect. It’s actually a simple, but extremely effective process. The original black and white artwork would show just a normal forest, albeit populated by fearsome beasts, but Rodriguez primarily using purple instead of green to colour nature transforms it into the forbidding alien environment.
In paperback the contents of this Yearbook Edition are available as Movie Night, The Horde and The Lost, and in effect form a single continued story. As before, Tynion uses frequent flashbacks to reveal the emotional baggage of the primary cast, but over the final third this begins to drag the story down, revealing what can be easily assumed and what has been referred to, without adding any significant extra detail. Also, for the first time, the relevant emotional pressure points seem contrived to prompt a narrative choice, and right at the end Tynion takes the easy option of tragedy to solve a problem instead of something more creative.
It’s not an easy journey for any of the main cast, and it takes its toll in different ways by an ending that not all reach. Before then the drama and danger have maintained the high standards of the first volume, and there’s certainly enough new information dropped to sustain the series as it heads to a conclusion in the next Yearbook Edition. Alternatively, you can buy the entire story in one massive book just called The Woods.
