Psychedelic visuals have been a constant of DC’s Young Animal imprint, differentiating these books from other superhero titles with bold, experimental artwork that is directly tied to the characters’ unique perceptions of the world. Perception is a key element of Cave Carson Has An Interstellar Eye, a series that revolves around a hero whose eye has been replaced by an alien machine. Artist Michael Avon Oeming and colorist Nick Filardi have gone above and beyond to make this book an explosion of surreal imagery that amplifies the weirdness of Jon Rivera’s scripts. That intense strangeness is balanced by the relationship between Cave and his daughter, Chloe, and they’ve grown closer together during their extraordinary adventures throughout the universe.
This exclusive preview of this week’s Cave Carson Has An Interstellar Eye #4 finds Cave, Chloe, and their accomplice, Bartow, stranded with a giant hole in their ship, where they decide to partake in a hallucinogenic fungi as an alternative to their diet of canned ham. This gives Oeming the opportunity to go even further with exaggeration, graphics, and textures, and Filardi intensifies the linework with vibrant colors that explode off the page. That “anything goes” quality is already evident before any mind-altering drugs are consumed, but this plot point takes everything up a few more notches to show the range of this art team’s trippy imagination. No other superhero comic looks like Cave Carson, and having a distinct point of view is what makes all of the Young Animal titles special.