Taxi v2: “A Cruise to Hell”

Taxi returns to throw herself into a new adventure that she probably should have thought through better in the first place.

But as impetuous as she can be, she’s also quick on her feet and can work the system in her favor when it counts.

Flag a taxi! We Need to Get to the Credits!

What’s Going On

Honestly, it’s a little convoluted this time out. There’s some arms dealers involved. There’s spying and action across multiple countries and continents. Some of the politics of the situation were probably more relevant to the time of this book’s original publication than today. at the same rate, it’s a conflict in the Middle East — that’s never out of fashion. sigh

It’s one of those books where you want to strap in and enjoy the ride and don’t worry about thinking about the plot too much. It may very well be completely thought through and buttoned up, but I couldn’t keep all the names and situations straight in my head.

There are some incorrect assumptions by the characters that are so close (yet wrong) that get acted upon, though they do explain the characters’ decisions and actions. That’s probably my favorite part of the plot. Their guess is as good as yours would be if you hadn’t seen the things already that they have to guess about. It’s a nice twist.

But, once again, Taxi finds herself in the middle of a precarious and dangerous situation. Can she get the story and get out alive? This one will be tricky for her.

I love this quick little sequence as Taxi attempts to traverse the desert. The first panel shows the desert closing in on her as the sun is setting. The second one opens things back up to show more of her isolation. The third panel puts her entirely in shadow to show how alone and hidden she is, even out in the open.

It’s Taxi’s survival that is the whole point of this story. This story is more about Taxi’s adventures than it is about the arms sales at the center of it. The various people and nations who are involved in the crimes Taxi is looking at are in place to give her something to do. She sneaks around, talks her way into survival, and has to make her way back to civilization before the plot’s ticking time bomb explodes.

The drama of the book is her trip. She puts herself into bad places, such as trying to sell herself as the girlfriend of an arms dealer to another arms dealer. She tries to talk her way out of situations, but that doesn’t always work as well as she might hope.

The Ending. Or, “What’s the Point?”

In fact, one might be disappointed in the ending. When all is said and done and Taxi has fulfilled her mission to stir up the plot, all the dominos fall off-panel. We get one final page packed with dialogue to answer the most basic of these questions, and then the book ends.

Really, “Taxi” v2 is just a survival book: Can Taxi survive this “research” expedition? The story is all about how she gets the information she needs. What Control Press does with it and what the effects of their reporting are, is not the story of this book. That’s handled as a one page afterwards, basically.

This book is much more about Taxi’s indomitable will to survive under extreme circumstances that I won’t spoil for you here. I think it’s a good choice — personality and character is always more memorable and substantial than plot twists and mysteries.

Font’s Art: Composition and Storytelling

Alfonso Font’s storytelling shines in this book. He’s great at making compositions and telling the story across multiple panels. You need look no further than the opening scene of the book to see that at work.

It’s a difficult scene to create in sequential narrative: It’s about diverting a train down different tracks while separating it from its load, all under shadow in a very brief time span

In fact, it can’t be done in art alone. Without adding in three times as many panels and double the number of ages, Font goes the more direct route: he shows as much as he can, and then deftly layers the exposition and explanation in as dialogue along the way.

It’s not that the dialogue saves the art. It complements it. The art stands well enough on its own. Font has a terrific eye for composition and interesting images. The work he does with the shadows here, in particular, is awesome and worth greater analysis.

The Lettering

This is something I didn’t mention for the first volume, but since I have a little extra space her, let me vent for a moment:

SAF Comics loves to use the Whizbang font. It’s 2019 and they’re still using it, or at least they’re not changing it out for digital reprints of books that maybe they initially translated years ago.

I do not like Whizbang. It looks too much like early computer lettering from the late 1990s. I wrote about it in this piece, with plenty of examples. There’s something about the design of that font that just pulls me out of the page.

It’s not nearly as dramatically bad as Comic Sans or Papyrus, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in the modern times when every book seems to have their own font to match the art.

Whizbang fights with the art.

SAF Comics has always used it and continues to use it and that makes no sense.

UGH.

Thanks, I feel better now.

And, yes, I’m aware that I’m annoyed by the lettering style of a book drawn by a guy whose last name is Font.

Any Excuse to Show More Alfonso Font Art

Alfonso Font’s specialty is introducing new locations. Here are four of them from this book.

Costa Del Sol:

A bookstore:

Port Alexandra:

Cairo:

Recommended?

Yes, there’s some great art in this book. The story is good, but I admit to having a hard time keeping all the players straight and all the logic the characters use in my mind. It’s not as difficult as I make it sound, but it feels like “Taxi” should be a slightly lighter read.

Besides, the bigger part of the book is Taxi’s adventures on a boat and on the African continent. Can she keep her wits about her long enough to push forward and get what she needs as well as what she wants? That’s an interesting story.

— 2019.032 —

Buy It Now

Bonus Art

If it at all helps to restore your faith in humanity, this attempt doesn’t work out as well as she had hoped, in the long run.

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