By Dustin Cabeal

Chinatown Bus is the type of book I used to love discovering at comic conventions. I’ve stopped going to comic conventions mostly because it stopped being a place of discovery for me. Often I would actually avoid artist alley because I had comics sitting in my inbox waiting to review. I know, that’s pretty lame, but I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to disappoint others even if it’s giving them a negative review.

Now, Chinatown Bus isn’t perfect, but it does have a charm to it. Again, it’s the type of indie book I would likely gravitate towards and check out on my own accord. Instead, creator M. Jacob Alvarez sent me a printed copy (Side note, if you want me to review your comics slightly faster, print is the way to go).

The story is about a man on a bus from Philly going to New York to see his girlfriend. It’s during a time of flip phones and bad reception. This plays into the story a lot as Lyn receives a message from his girlfriend that feels like a breakup message. He gets pissed because shit, some of you remember those days when it felt like years before you’d get the next message. He’s already past the anger stage and hasn’t even confirmed that he’s broken up yet. Lyn meets Jane, a hipster looking woman going to see her friend’s band in Brooklyn. They make some small talk, and he’s on his way to the show with her. Along the way, though he bashes everyone in New York City and the surrounding boroughs as he and Jane take turns pissing each other off. By the end of it, there’s a lot of changes for Lyn.

Lyn’s journey is the hook of the story which ties my hands when talking about it some. The plot points are believable and yet ridiculous. The entire night seems pretty crazy and full of coincidences, but if there’s one thing you can count on when dealing with relationships, there’s plenty of room for crazy shit to happen. Towards the end you’ll kind of wonder what the point of the story was, it almost ends in an anti-climatic way or at least emotionally opposite from what you’d expect. Lyn narrates suddenly, having never done so in the story before, but it fits the tone of the book. Usually, I would call bullshit on that, the “disappearing narration” comes across as a lazy way of storytelling, but here it drives home a dramatic and relatable point of the story.

The artwork needed more consistency throughout the story. There are strange proportions at times either with the size of the characters or the length of their necks. It was distracting at times, but the story pushes forward easily making it easily missed. The inking is thick. Perhaps too thick as a lot of the details look generic or completely muddy on the page. The latter half of the comic doesn’t suffer from as many problems as the beginning, but the inking is still thick. The character designs were strange in that they didn’t seem to match the era or the setting.

Chinatown Bus is a quick read about one strange night. It fits the New York vibe of “anything can and does happen in an evening” or however the real cliché goes. Fleshed out some more this would even make a great rom-com or dark rom-com which would be pretty interesting to see. For a comic, it was an entertaining read, and one I’m glad was sent to me to check out. It gave me those tingles of discovery that I have long forgotten, which was nice.

Score: 3/5

Chinatown Bus
M. Jacob Alvarez
www.HypnoSpiralComic.Com