Take one part Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, one part 9/11/01, add a dash of I Am Legend, and you’ve got In the Small, a graphic novel by illustrator Michael Hague.
I just finished reading this and it was quite a let down. The art, while technically well done, did not work for me. There seemed to be a constant focus on faces, and the style was a little too realistic. It looked as if he took pictures of what he wanted and went over them in colored pencil. This resulted in the odd effect of a book having bad acting.
The premise could’ve been a decent one with a little more explanation and fleshing out, but it was very raw. “On a beautiful September morning,” (in New York City, no less), a blue light flashed and suddenly everyone was shrunk to 1/12th size. Now they have to get back to the suburbs to live on a farming commune (one character’s home with a greenhouse attached) and “survive.” That’s the ultimate goal of the book, really - for everyone to get back to where they were before the blue flash; just surviving.
The dialogue was awful.
The ending left lots of loose ends. The bottom of the last page throws in a major element that would send the whole story in a different direction if it continued, but apart from that there is nothing to suggest it’s going to continue. It’s only ~120 pages, which is unusually short for a graphic novel. If he had more story it seems like he would’ve put it here instead of holding it back for second edition.
What threw me was that the cover says SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!!! Someone must see something in it that I don’t if they’re investing the money to make a movie out of it.