A Lambent Thing-- Paul Chadwick's That Concrete: Stars Over Sand #2

More than the first issue, Concrete: Stars Over Sand #2 gives us a taste of what it must be like to be Concrete.  The first issue was a return years (decades) after Paul Chadwick’s last major Concrete story, in which Ron Lithgow’s stony body spawned a tiny, comatose copy of his alien body.  In the first issue of the miniseries, Chadwick didn’t make it easy for the reader trying to catch up— there was no attempt to explain who anyone was or how they found themselves at this point in their lives.  He just picked up where he ended and had Concrete, his assistant/friend Larry, Maureen (it’s complicated,) and Baby Concrete (if we can have a Baby Yoda, we can have a Baby Concrete) try to get away for a few days with a camping trip out to the Colorado dunes.  Going for a late-night solo walk on the dunes to do some writing, Concrete is struck by lightning from an unexpected storm that knocks Concrete unconscious.  And then, the dune rolled over Concrete, burying him.

In the second issue, he wakes up amnesiac.  He has no idea why his body is stone and that (understandably) freaks him out.  Back in the 1980s when Concrete first appeared in the pages of Dark Horse Presents, Ron Lithgow was already in the alien body and had been adjusting to it.  That introduction and those early stories focused on the mundanity of life, even in Lithgow’s uniquely unique experience.  While he eventually showed how Lithgow became Concrete (that sounds way more superheroey than it needs to,) it was basically a flashback for the reader and for Concrete— a tale he was telling.  We got to know his experience but saw it as something that he experienced in the past and had worked beyond.  Stars Over Sand is much more immediate and raw; this is happening in the here and now, not in the past as a memory.  

In many ways, this feels more like what the experience of waking up in an alien body would be— the confusion, disorientation, and fear that would be there to wake up in a body that’s not your own and have no idea what was happening.  That desperation of not knowing, whether it’s Concrete not knowing who or what he is or Maureen not knowing where Concrete is, energizes the story.  It’s not a fun or exciting energy but an anxious energy, one more scared of the world and our place within it.  Chadwick has always been great at creating these stories that have a hum of this anxiousness but here it becomes the overwhelming beat of this story.

Chadwick’s art is wonderfully normal until the moments that it’s extraordinary.  He lulls you into the normalcy of everyday life and then surprises and delights you with moments of sheer spectacle.  A page of a search party walking over the dunes becomes this rolling tapestry of disorienting peaks and valleys that is all too easy to get lost in.  There’s another page of a lost and memoryless Concrete seeing something on the horizon in extremely clear detail.  “He sees the moon as a new thing in the world.”  Chadwick turns the whole experience of being lost into an experience of discovery.  His pages open up this old world to new senses.  

Concrete: Stars Over Sand #2 is a great issue that feels like an introduction to Concrete, or at least what it would be like to be Concrete.  This is a comic about the mystery and grandeur of life; that’s what Chadwick explores in his comics.  Even in the mundane everyday existence, there are wonders all around that we’re blind to.  Even a person like Concrete, who’s had a singular existence that we could only imagine, can get bogged down by endless days and nights.  This comic explores a day-in-day-out magic that we’re blind to and reminds us that we need to look at the world around us with new eyes.