I requested "The Tin Can Society" as soon as I saw it because I was mesmerised by its cover, the story and the themes it focused on. This book reminded me of "Iron Man" with the kids from "IT", but the evil clown is capitalism.
It's not very often that we see disability and disabled characters being portrayed as active protagonists, much less when they are characters of colour, so I was really excited about this book. This has one of the strongest beginnings I have ever read, touching on so many important and timely themes, and I couldn't see how this would be anything other than 5 stars.
I loved how original the story was, how every character was at least morally grey, how every little detail we learnt about them, and what happened between their childhood friendship and the present, where none of them got along, added so much complexity to each character and the story, and the art was absolutely amazing.
Unfortunately, about halfway through the book, it felt like a new writer had come in, perused over what had been written and decided to completely ignore all the arcs and storylines that had been set up, and turned this into an empty blockbuster, that ended in a big battle, that realistically would have changed nothing, undid the book's great plot twist and made this book ultimately stand for nothing.
This book betrayed itself in the worst way possible by disregarding the character's dynamics and the importance of their identities. What's the point of writing about a black disabled kid, being adopted into a white anti-science Christian family and not exploring his feelings about his idea of family, and his career as a scientist, even more when his DNA is used in the way it is in the book? The only thing that made sense about him was that he found solace in the only other person of colour, but their relationship is never explored. What's the point of putting the only female character on the cover, giving her such an interesting look and profession, only to make her a love interest and the biggest pick me that surrounds herself only with men? Take representation like this away from me, please.
I read this entire thing just to see a bunch of black people, and babies pass away off page, black pain being used as shock value, the mostly white male cast get their happy ending by joining the system that committed atrocities, and it being sold as a happy ending because they were making slightly less of a profit than the previous owners. A happy ending written by an American is the same as a tragedy for me, I guess.
Thank you to NetGalley, Edelweiss, Image Comics and Simon & Schuster for this DRC.