Review by Ian Keogh

reMIND begins by focussing on Sonja, living in a beautifully drawn remote seaside community with her cat Victuals. She’s a talented technical engineer whose skills seem wasted looking after a lighthouse, and she reaches a crisis point early when Victuals goes missing. He’s found relatively quickly, but as seen on the sample art, there have been considerable changes during his absence. The title is clever, and the meaning becomes obvious around a third of the way through.

Originally published over two volumes, the first half of reMIND is the stronger for Jason Brubaker mixing fantasy elements into a recognisable world. This is cleverly done via relatively mundane objects reformatted to create a mythology, while Sonja’s hometown subsists on tourists attracted by rumours a lizard man was once seen there. Rather than play out reMIND as a mystery, the converted Victuals relates who he is and where he’s from relatively shortly after arriving at Sonja’s home, and the story then becomes a quest for him to return home and convince people their society and beliefs are constructed on a foundation of lies.

The extraordinary illustrations Brubaker created when reMIND was originally published as two separate volumes drew considerable praise, and over a decade since the story was concluded they remain inordinately impressive. Sonja’s hometown is drawn so beautifully one wonders why it took a possible lizard man to attract tourists, and the thought put into designing the town carries through all other aspects of the art. It’s largely presented across spreads, although never in a way that detracts from the story.

However, once the story returns to Victuals’ undersea world the contrast of fantasy and reality is lost and Brubaker resorts to more common ideas to continue. Younger readers not as familiar with fantasy scenarios may continue to be absorbed by events, but while admiring the art, older readers won’t otherwise encounter enough originality.