FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #10

"Wish You Were Here," Part Three
written by Simon Oliver
art by Robbi Rodriguez

Professor Sen's quantum reality tank has been explained quite enough, if obliquely, in the last two issues.  While the summary she gives in the opening page of FBP #10 is helpful in clarifying the competing theoretical definitions of "reality"—as "direct" and "indirect"—Oliver spends a little too much time spinning his physics wheels and too little time growing the increasingly interesting relationship between Adam and Rosa and the conspiracy that seems to be tracking them down.

"Wish You Were Here" has been playing a game of disjunction from the opening of the arc, challenging readers to identify the inconsistencies and ironies in the image and layers of narration and dialogue and to try to make some sense out of them.  It's a strategy that teases the reader into the unreliable and ever-shifting world of the protagonists.  But FBP #10 exploits this more than any other, embedding changes—some subtle, some not—into the story.  Switching the lady-cop's name from Rebecca to Bailey but maintaining Adam's ability to guess it correctly is rather evident, but shifting around the characters in the opening flashback and having Cicero mix up Sen's gender—"she" to "he"—when he was so careful about it in FBP #8 is a far less conspicuous and more disorienting variability.  They're understated invitations to scour the series, particularly the arc, for more distortions of reality.

Rosa remains enigmatic, perhaps guided (as she seems to be in this issue) by a desire to return to the universe she grew up in, but growing attachments to her FBP co-workers.  In particular her flirtation with Adam, even if in the "reality" of their own mutual making where she would be the only woman not immediately swayed by either of their desires, is a small glimpse into her emotional interior.  Adam's developing feelings for her are at least more visible and perhaps more acute.  His (seemingly one-sided) discomfort as disrobing alongside Rosa is surprisingly adorable.  Having that moment get interrupted by a phone call from his casual lover Clara is a sudden reminder of Adam's previous sexual temperament, and that it seems to hit him harder than it does the reader is quite telling.  Likewise, his one-night dalliance with Rebecca/Bailey is obviously a poor substitute for what he fantasizes with Rosa, a woman who clearly and aggressively desires him, and his morning-after guilt-call to Rosa is an unwitting admission of his feelings for her and a sincere gesture of concern.  She is, after all, the first person he thinks of upon waking.

Unfortunately for her, Clara has already been dragged unknowingly into the mystery behind Adam's father's disappearance.  Her investigations into cameraman Blackwood have landed her squarely in the crosshairs of murderous conspirators, whose leader seems to be Caleb Hardy himself.  Though unnamed, his distinctive nose and facial hair certainly have a similar if aged appearance, and the selected excerpts from Hardy's journal in the final page are preoccupied with Mark Twain, from whom he clearly stole his "look".  Adam's father, presumably lost while chasing a quantum tornado, appears to be back, and likely FBP's most dangerous man.

Meanwhile, Nathan Fox once again delivers a brilliant, brain-teasing pop-art cover.  It's a simultaneously admiring and irreverent homage to M. C. Escher that bursts with neon color and clashing geometric patterns.  But it's real soul is the sly, mildly naughty pink lipstick smear on Cicero's cheek and his pleased impish grin at having received it from the blonde woman with the balloon, passing on a different plane.

[July 2014]