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KAMEELMAN #3
Review by Alan Rankin
(A1 Oregon Publishing / PO Box 1324 / Lake Oswego, OR / 97035 USA. Web:
www.kameelman.com)
This issue highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of this unusual new comic. Kameelman is a teenage clone, genetically engineered with chameleon DNA, so he can assume the appearance of anyone else. He and his support team of friends use these abilities to intervene in other people’s troubled lives, confronting such real-life issues as hazing and sexual harassment. The latter topic is the subject of this issue, as the group deals with Todd, a young cad who treats women like objects. Todd is pressuring his girlfriend to have sex before she’s really ready – I’m sure the book’s teen readers can readily identify with the issues involved.
The comic also features a continuing subplot about the sinister scientist who created Kameelman – but it’s not as involving as the main storyline. Worse, in this issue, it actually diverts the reader’s attention from the climax of Todd’s story. For my money, they could have ditched the subplot entirely, keeping the focus on what is already a complex issue (sex – it doesn’t get more complicated than
that, especially for teen-agers). Another unique feature of
Kameelman is that each story has an alternate ending on the book’s Web site, and readers are invited to vote on which ending they preferred. In the case of issue 3, I would have chosen a combination of the two endings – one in which the title character was more involved with the story’s resolution (as he was in the Web ending), but that confronted the issue of sexual responsibility a little more directly (as in the comic). This time around, in my opinion, both the scientist subplot and the multiple endings diluted what was otherwise a careful treatment of a complex subject.
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