“You make me stumble, make me blind, time after time and line by line”
The enigmatically-named Rubine is the writer and artist of Look Into My Eyes, which comes to us from Mad Cave. 
It’s colored by Francesco Segala, lettered by our old buddy El Torres, and edited by Jon Moisan. It costs $17.99 and it’s 123 pages long.
Rubine is a very good artist, so this book looks amazing. He has a beautifully thin line, so he’s usually very precise and detailed, and he also has a wild imagination, so he’s able to bring some very cool things to life and make them look eerily realistic (like some of the monsters in this book). He has a good sense of teenagers, too — I don’t know how old he is, but he’s at least able to “get” how teens look — the characters in this book are clearly trying on personae as they navigate high school, and we get the clothes and the make-up and the general vibe of teens doing their thing because they don’t know quite who they are yet. The main character, RJ (Riley Jean), cuts her hair in a Goth-esque style, with bangs attempting to obscure her eyes, which she circles with dark make-up to make her look corpse-like. She dresses in an emo style, but she also just wants the popular boy to like her, which is an important plot point, as it turns out. She tries to be disaffected, of course, but she also has to save everyone from the monsters in the town. Her sibling, Laurie, is non-binary, and Rubine makes their style very non-gendered as well, as if they watched one too many Diane Keaton movies in the 1970s. But like all the characters, it’s a style unique to them, and it’s nicely done. 
Rubine also does nice work with the faces, as our characters have to react to a lot of stuff, both mundane and creepy, and the art is very good in that regard. He creates an interesting place for the action, too — the town of Cravenwood is clearly a fairly decent place to live, but Rubine does a good job around the edges showing that some rot has set in. As Cravenwood is an island in what appears to be a somewhat rainy place, it could be just weathering, but it could also be supernatural corruption, and it’s neat that he doesn’t really comment on it. He does some cool stuff with off-register panels and coloring, too, as the world of the comic becomes a bit more ajar than the characters might want it to be. This happens in conjunction with the monsters, which are already creepy, and it makes the world of the comic a bit more dangerous. Rubine also does something clever: we never see an adult’s face in this comic. Either they’re off-panel or they’re wearing protective gear with large helmets and opaque visors, and it adds nicely to the theme of these kids facing these dangers alone. The adults exist, but they’re certainly not going to help.
As for the story — well, it’s fine, but a bit predictable and familiar. Hey, kids, did you know social media and staring at your phones constantly is bad for you? I know, shocking! 
RJ is the only one in town not on the latest cool app, but she succumbs eventually because she’s investigating the disappearance of a classmate, who may have been killed by monsters coming out of the app? Maybe? Anyway, monsters appear, and it does seem like it’s linked to the app, and RJ and a small group of her classmates — some of whom are friends, some of whom are enemies, some of whom are objects of desire — have to figure out what’s going on and fight back and stay alive. The biggest problem is that one character is not named for a while, or if he is I missed it, so when RJ is talking about him at a crucial juncture, I wasn’t sure who she meant. Anyway, there’s a new right-wing fringe group that’s killing all the “infected,” the responsible adults are trying to clean everything up, and RJ and her group are just trying to get out. Nothing happens that is all that surprising, but I do like how Rubine doesn’t really resolve it too well, because it does have a feel of “the genie’s out of the bottle and everything sucks now” vibe that hits far too close to home. It’s a fine story, but nothing special.
Overall, this is a pretty neat comic that doesn’t quite hit the heights that you’d want, but also doesn’t do anything terribly wrong. The art is better than the writing, and it’s a very nice book to look at, so that’s nice. The story is fine, but nothing special. If you’re a big horror fan, this might hit you in a better spot. I just liked it but didn’t love it. Such is life.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
