Matt Kindt’s been getting a bit of exposure lately in mainstream comics given that he starts writing DC’s Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE starting with next months #10, but that’s not all he’s up to. His first original ongoing series started this week with Mind MGMT #1 from Dark Horse Comics. Though I’m not a huge fan of his art style, I do want to give his writing a chance, and the way this new series was described really made me interested, so on a bit of a whim I went ahead and picked up issue #1 this week.

Read on for my review!

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Honestly, I don’t want to say much about what this series is about because I didn’t know much at all before reading the first issue, and that may have added to the enjoyment of it. That kind of makes this review hard to do, but I’ll do it anyway, because I think this is going to be a series worth reading as the months go by. So if you don’t want any spoilers, don’t read the rest of this review. It’ll be pretty spoiler-light, but beware. 

Two years ago there was a flight in which everyone on the plane all of a sudden experienced simultaneous amnesia except for one child. On top of this, one passenger of the 121 was never accounted for when everyone exited the plane, and that missing passenger has yet to have been found.

The story here focuses on one of the passengers on that flight, a woman who before the amnesia incident had been a best selling author, who has an idea to put together another book which is her own investigation of what really happened during the flight that day. She doesn’t know this, but she’s about to get mixed up in something much bigger than she thinks, and Matt Kindt does well at teasing this fact not only during the bulk of the issue, but in two backup stories that are included in this first issue. 

There’s essentially a sense that things are going to get much, much bigger from here on out. We really know just the tip of it from reading this first issue, but Kindt really does hint at the expansion of the story here, and it makes me extremely intrigued as to what’ll happen next.

As I said before, I’m not a fan of Kindt’s art style, and that doesn’t change much after reading this issue. I can still read it and enjoy it for the story, and the way the story is being told does kind of work along with the style of the art, but I can’t help but judge it as a lesser version of Jeff Lemire’s work. However, the way Kindt illustrates the covers for this series is, in my opinion, beautiful and leagues better than his own interiors. 

By the time I finished the first issue of this new series I was convinced that I’d be coming back again next month for more, because despite the shortcomings that I felt with the art I think the story makes it worth it, and hey, I wasn’t the most fond of Lemire’s style when I started reading his work but it grew on me over time enough for me to consider him one of my favorite artists as well as writers. Mind MGMT is worth the cover price, and it’s a series I’ll be excited to follow each month.

GO Rating: 4/5

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