I Really Should Read This 24: MIND MGMT Omnibus 1, by Matt Kindt

 MIND MGMT Omnibus 1, by Matt Kindt

2012, collected in 2019

This is another one I'd been wanting to read, and now I have! Or have I?

Kindt does cool stuff with the graphics, and it's not just neat-looking design; it taps into the books themes

I get why some people really like this book. I have some really positive things to say about it. But there are some things that hold it back too and kept me from loving it. I wanted to read this mainly because of the name and the cover. It's a great name and Kindt has a lot of clever ideas. He's got some big fans too, his back cover blurbs are from Brian Michael Bendis, David Goyer, and Damien Lindloff, all people who've reached the pinnacle of success in their chosen field, which says a lot for the quality of the book. 

If you look close and turn your head, you can read some stuff on the side

The MIND MGMT is a secret organization that pulls the strings of society. Sometimes it's very directly, wiping people's minds or inciting action, and sometimes it's subtle, like subliminal content in media to trigger effects. Kindt has created multiple layers of paranoia, like someone catalogued all the doped-up high school students in America's theories about what "they" do. In the 12 issues collected in this book, he packs a lot of weird variations on psychic manipulation: suggestion, mind reading of the general vicinity as a form of future prediction, the power to write advertising that directly manipulates, self-healing by willpower. If you show any form of potential psychic power, chances are you will be recruited by the MIND MGMT organization.

How could they be so heartless as to use a cat?

He layers in history pages between issues that give a better scope of the organization and its history, and gives short biographies of key members. He also throws in fake advertising that captures the themes of the book. He's created a dense story for the world these characters live in. 

The thing that held me back from loving this was the art, and I hate to say that, because Kindt is doing it himself. He's done a few omnibuses worth of work, so his heart is into it, and he's a proper auteur. But I couldn't get with it. And I think he's fully aware that some people feel this way.

He's fully aware that some people feel this way

I have very broad tastes in comic art, and I was trying to like it more, but my main sense was that it lacked form. And the watercolor washes don't have enough variety in them from scene to scene or location to location. The book is printed on a powerful beige color that seeps though. Especially compared to the last book I read, which was also coincidentally watercolors, MIND MGMT looks muddy.

I liked the lettering he did, but every word balloon is perfect oval, and that didn't work with the art, which is extremely loose. I don't think I've ever seen perfect ovals used in a comic from a major publisher. 

The parody ads in the first half of the collection are jarring in their realism, compared to the rest of the book

He does parody ads in the book and the first half look like they were yanked from a magazine. It's a nice idea, but they don't suit the aesthetics of the book. In the second half, the ads are done by hand and look a lot more in line with the overall tone. The ads were a good idea, and I love the attention to detail, so I'm glad to see he was able to develop them to where they fit the book better.

An ad that matches the book's aesthetic better

Breaking the book down into two parts, the first introduces us to the concept of MIND MGMT as we experience it through a journalistic author, Meru. She travels the world in search of answers to unexplained phenomena, specifically a flight that landed and all passengers have amnesia. It's a good story and has an ending I didn't expect, but worked perfectly once I'd read it. I have to be obtuse in writing about it because the pleasure is in the mystery unfolding, and this is a book where the spoilers probably would spoil the book.

At one point, the book has the main story, a novel excerpt on the side, and some stuff going on at the bottom. It's a lot

The second book lets us get to know some MIND MGMT members better, and has a wider focus. It's very well crafted as well, though it overloaded the story for my tastes. Kindt is running three parallel threads at one point, which luckily gets pared down to two quickly. But he also has a lot of marginalia, official document style print on the sides of pages which were, in my case, optional. For some people this might be amazing, but I don't enjoy turning my book sideways every page and I don't enjoy squinting. It's a novelty that wore itself out quickly.
 

He does some of the MIND MGMT personnel files on gray paper, but it's still pretty muddy

On the whole, I liked the book. It has some great concepts which I didn't even get into. The one that entertained me the most was a library in Shangri-la which holds an objective history of the world. It's a beautiful, impossible concept, as if I said I am holding a perfect square in my pocket. It makes sense theoretically, but is beyond what humans are capable of.

Kindt did this all himself, so I have a huge respect for this work, but it didn't translate to a love for it. The good in this is very good though, and I definitely will keep an eye out for his name and other projects he is part of.