Review by Ian Keogh
After six volumes of Emma Vieceli’s sensitively engaging versions of the Life is Strange cast, Zoe Thorogood continues the series with Forget Me Not. New readers can start here as a new continuity is explored.
The game on which the graphic novels are based deals with alternate timelines, and Forget Me Not follows the continuity established by the third game release, Life is Strange: True Colors. It’s separated from previous volumes via a different cover design, and Alex Chen being a new protagonist, although favourite characters from the previous series are seen at times in different incarnations as a supporting cast. Here, though, it’s Alex and Steph, her partner and bandmate, with Alex having the hidden talent to read and occasionally manipulate the emotions of others. They’re touring when they pick up Lily, a young girl able to take away the memories of others into herself.
Life is Strange has always been a drama focussed on people, but over the first chapter there’s too much concentration on that and too little on any plot. There’s the mitigation of emotionally rich art from series regular Claudia Leonardi, but it doesn’t resonate. However, when Thorogood reaches the crux of Forget Me Not there’s an instant leap in quality. Reading minds is a common enough superhero standby, most often used as a narrative device without investigating the emotional consequences. Embedding that ability in a child too young to cope with the resulting emotions supplies a real horror. Forget Me Not then becomes a mission to return Lily’s taken memories to their rightful owners.
That’s a great premise enabling Thorogood to drop into a comfort zone. On solo projects she’s been exceptional at creating characters readers can care about, yet the idea is discarded after a single occasion, replaced by a search for Lily’s father. It’s an equally viable plot, and opens the door to possible heartbreak, but beyond one shock it doesn’t prove as interesting, and thereafter the story meanders.
Leonardi’s work is as fine as it’s been throughout the series, defining people and how they feel within, but she has difficulty with Lily. She’s supposed to be thirteen, but as drawn seems so much younger that it’s a surprise when her age is revealed.
Forget Me Not is a pleasing look into a solid relationship between Alex and Steph, with a few good revelations along the way, but misses opportunities to head to head somewhere more interesting.
