Somebody tried to kill Elle Peterssen. She’s comatose in the hospital. Her wealthy family doesn’t seem to care much — not her Korean tiger mom, not her emotionally vacant father, not her spoiled brother. They consider her hospitalization a major inconvenience. Elle’s boyfriend, Dane, cares a lot but he’s the prime suspect.
Elle, unconscious in a hospital bed, is somewhat aware of what’s happening. Her disembodied, amnesiac mind inhabits a kind of spirit world with other coma patients. With the aid of a psychologist (also in a coma and in a hospital bed right next to her) and a British coma patient, Elle attempts to figure out who she is and how she ended up this way.
Meanwhile back on Earth, clues of a complicated plot concerning Elle reveal themselves in odd places — in a hospital staff doctor who purges Elle’s records, in hoodie-wearing nogoodniks skulking in doorways and whispering urgently in their cellphones about contingency plans, in office explosions, and in double-crosses.
Mind the Gap: Intimate Strangers collects the first five issues of Jim McCain (writer) and Rodin Esquejo’s (artist) Hitchcock-esque comic book series of the same name. The art is superb and the story is a masterfully-paced, intriguing thriller.
Warning: this is an ongoing series so when you get to the end of this graphic novel, you’ll want to find out what happens next. Fortunately Mind the Gap #6 is out. I’m going to wait for Volume 2 of the anthology series, myself.