Paranoid Gardens, the new Dark Horse Comics book by Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston, is a bit of a puzzle box. Deliberately strange and off-putting, you’re not meant to know what’s going on in the book, much like the main character, Loo. But in Paranoid Gardens #3, it becomes abundantly clear what the series is about: creativity versus commerce.
The setup, if you haven’t been reading the series, is that it’s set in a curious care facility filled with some normal people, some superheroes, and some outright monsters. Our window character is Loo, a caretaker at the facility who may be a patient herself. There are pulsating, fleshy walls. There are mysteries surrounding where Paranoid Gardens is, or perhaps when. And forces outside want into the Gardens — or maybe to destroy it entirely.
In Paranoid Gardens #3, the grounds are dying thanks to interlopers who were killed and buried there last issue. It’s part of an overall plot by one of the doctors, who either wants out of the Gardens, to steal something or a third option. Again, everything is purposefully obtuse to the point of frustration. But that puts us the readers in the same position as Loo.
Weston draws everything carefully and ominously throughout. The strange, neck-mouthed creatures who populate the gardens are offset by the sheer normalcy of everyone else. And the Gardens themselves are lovely, at least when they’re in bloom. Weston is the perfect partner for Way and Simon here, and every page pops with verve and color.
But back to the point of this review — and the book. The team tipped their hand a bit last issue by introducing two men in monkey masks, with golden dollar bill sign chains around their necks. It becomes abundantly clear what’s happening in this issue, and what those monkey men are all about. The bad doctor puts on the same costume and bows at an altar of paraphernalia. Loo sucks out the infection of the dead bodies and the garden blooms. A regular deliveryman enters, and the staff panics: this is supposed to be a safe place.
The Gardens are that a safe place for creativity to grow, and for the mind to wander, heal, and create new things. The forces allied against it are commerce masked as art. It’s pretty clear that the “villains” are NFTS. They’re bored apes. They’re money monkeys, franchised. And they’re the antithesis of art, as they are all the same, homogenized ideas, stolen from real art. What commerce does is consume and destroy art under the guise of owning it.
That’s what Paranoid Gardens is about. How Loo fits in? Perhaps that’s for the next issue, but I’d guess she’s the artist. And this book, most definitely, is art.
Paranoid Gardens #3 Rating:
Paranoid Gardens #3 Official Synopsis:
Writers Gerard Way (The Umbrella Academy) and Shaun Simon (The Fabulous Killjoys), join forces with Illustrator Chris Weston (The Filth), colorist Dave Stewart (Hellboy), and letterer Nate Piekos (Black Hammer) to present an all-new surreal comic book experience that’s Derek meets Doctor Who… in six psychotic episodes!
Loo and the care center staff are troubled when they discover the living gardens they reside on is dying. As she desperately hunts for a cure a mysterious spy employed by a bizarre amusement park gets in her way to keep the gardens from healing.
Six issue series.