TITLE:Memorial #1
AUTHOR: Chris Roberson
PENCILLER: Rich Ellis
PUBLISHER: IDW Publishing
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASED: December 21, 2011

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

Memorial is only one issue old, but the world Chris Roberson and Rich Ellis have created already seems quite large. That in itself is a pretty impressive accomplishment.

Our main character is a girl named Em, who suffers from amnesia and can’t remember anything about her past, including her real name. Her only clue is a locket around her neck with the letter “M” on it, thus her new name. Meanwhile, in the enchanted world of the Everlands, an evil empress (at least that’s what she seems to be) demands that her henchmen, a living marionette named Puppet and a machine/man hybrid named Hook, find a mysterious key in order to destroy a “memory palace.” Back in our world, Em finds a mysterious, and somehow familiar key at a small shop. From there, our hero is suddenly thrust into a wonderous, yet very dangerous world. Little does she know that she may literally hold the key to a larger-than-life conflict she knows nothing of.

Memorial feels like a fairy tale, or at the very least a modern day myth. It reads a lot like an Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz-type story, or even Harry Potter, where a character from our world is tossed from the mundane into the spectacular, and finds that they somehow belong. The amnesia element is a nice twist, and I suspect we’ll find out that Em has some kind of deep connection to the Everlands, and was somehow cast out by this unnamed evil empress.

Chris Roberson has said that he’s packing Memorial with different ideas that he’s always wanted to put in his books, but has never been able to. When you’re building a world like this, I can certainly see how that would be a fun place to start, because it’s all a blank slate. In this issue alone, we see a talking puppet, a machine man, a fairy, some little alien-looking creatures, angry statues, a talking cat, among other things. I get the impression that this book has a lot to show us, which may prove to be it’s strongest selling point.

I’m definitely interested in seeing more of Puppet. Anybody remember Night of the Living Dummy, from R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series? He reminds me of the dummy character in those books. Maybe I’m still hyped up over The Muppets, but that character really grabbed me.

Memorial is definitely a worth taking a look at. It’s got a lot of traditional fairy tale/myth plot points to it, but there’s so many directions Roberson and Ellis can take it that it’s got an element of intrigue that’s very appealing. It’s got my attention, that’s for sure.

Front page image from comicsalliance.com. Interior page from newsarama.com.