MIND MGMT Volume 4: The Magician

Matt kindt at his best. Normally I don't like his stuff but this whole series is damn well done.

Great series. It really sets a mood and gives you am experience. Brilliant.

A great series.

MIND MGMT is a series that aggressively attacks readers with paranoia. The titular Mind Management organization uses culture as a surgical tool. Songs, ads, movies, magic shows, children’s novels are wielded like a scalpel, and on occasion like a bludgeon, to reshape the political and social landscape. Why? For whose ends? The uncertainty of the answers to those questions only increases the anxiety for readers.Author and artist Matt Kindt is reminiscent of author Thomas Pynchon; he boldly reveals a schizophrenic vision of a hidden world.Coincidently, I read the 4th volume of the Marvel Masterwork Uncanny X-men concurrent with this 4th volume of MIND MGMT. The parallels between the works is, pardon the pun, UNCANNY. Both series focus on hidden societies of para-normaled individuals. Both feature a red-haired woman with powers beyond the control of the other meta-humans. Those are superficial similarities though. The real disquieting connection is the parallel stories. The X-men wage a feud with a parallel group of mutants, the Hellfire Club, who are secret power-brokers in the industrial world. In MIND MGMT, one crew of meta-humans feud with another crew who are secret power-brokers. And in both stories, the heroes suffer terrible indignities and losses. It was enough to make me seriously wonder if a secret society REALLY was using culture to transmit a message. And that message? SURRENDER, of course.X-men creators Chris Claremont and John Byrne tell their story in 3 issues while Matt Kindt takes 6. The story doesn’t feel unnecessarily padded. Kindt wonderfully takes his time expounding upon the personal histories of each character as they enter the plot. It helps to make each volume accessible to new readers and engaging for regular ones. Kindt spends a time deploying the history of a team of genetic experiments turned circus attractions. The warmth and care taken to reveal their history is wonderfully done. It isn’t a surprise that some of them swear allegiance to the malevolent MIND MGMT but the sympathy you have for them is deftly handled by Kindt. It’s a beautiful metaphor for the series’ larger theme of pliable history.MIND MGMT has been a remarkably refreshing series. It uses atypical watercolor art, peculiar story-telling rhythms and innovate design to attack the reader. It's the kind of fight I enjoy.

New allegiances are formed and plans are laid, but the edge-of-your-seat mystery and suspense slow down

Matt Kindt's series gets even more complicated. Not a great beginning point, but an exceptional addition to the series. Dense, imaginative, an overpowering sense of befuddlement, it's a great ride with no predictability.