Rob Cham’s Lost Finds Something New

In my last review for things by Rob Cham, we were left a brave new world to explore. However, in this Lost review, things might remain same, too.

Exhibit A: Giant Birds.

If you guys remember, Rob emphasized a world that knew of no light by the existence of monsters. Here in Lost, he uses a different kind of storytelling: the fact the world has never been explored before can only mean they our main characters are, in fact, Lost. As quickly as they are drawn by the very surprised giant avian, they fall into the proverbial rabbit hole of sorts.

From here, it’s visual dissonance. The author uses corrupted images as inspiration, getting trippy but also conveying that this is not where they are supposed to be. To one person, it might be something to poke at, and to another it might something you want to run away from. The beauty of the way Rob tells this entire comic is that it is told from two perspectives; his white, boxy character (who at this point I shall call Box), and the dark, tear dropped shaped one (henceforth Tear). The comic is still silent, and both of them are still nameless. However, once they are split by a portal they fall into, the whole comic unravels into two contained spaces where things change into something isolated and lonely.

Box falls into a world that he’s familiar with. It’s dark, and it has monsters. And it’s absolutely disturbing how Rob deals with it. Once you’ve got a taste of light, anything that moves without your visual knowledge makes sure your paranoia spikes to alarming levels. Personally to me, it looks like what Box has come face to face with just feeds on it. The more distressed Box is, the more it grows. In another dimension, Tear starts out trapped but soon Tear is bored somehow yet is also met with familiarity. Unexpectedly, Tear builds a life for herself without Box in it.

Their paths diverge further and further here on in. Box is saved by another character, and it shows that his love for exploration is not diminished. Thing is though, Tear also experiences the same thing but with family. This is so different to how Box experiences things that it changes how they both they look at world.

I applaud Rob on his use of contrast here. He gets to tell the same story in different themes but all the while also similar. It also helps that the stories are juxtaposed – the left pages tell the story of Box, and the right pages tell the story of Tear. You can follow them individually for a while, but in the end they converge to finish the tale.

In a strange way though, when the story finally comes together, it feels as though things have begun the same way with a new perspective. There’s no longer a map with the way things started out with Light, but after what the character has been through, maybe it is not just about the bigger world he has seen and about see, but also the people who he has shared and will share the upcoming adventures with.

Lost comes out first on April 16, 2016, at Summer Komikon. You can also check out the first few pages of the comic after the jump. Check out more of Rob Cham’s work here!