There are fewer things more frustrating to a reader than an unfinished story. How a story ends plays a large role in determining a work’s overall quality (see: the new Battlestar Galactica) but if there’s one thing worse than having a bad ending, it’s having no ending at all.

Unfortunately, any fan of komiks will know this feeling, intimately. I could list a litany of titles here: “Cast” by Jaime Bautista (issue twelve has yet to be released—a message in the Nautilus egroups set the expected publication date of the special sixty page issue as “before the end of 2008”), “One Day Isang Diwa”, “Solstice Butterfly” from the Culture Crash Comics series ended without much in the way of closure when Culture Crash ceased publication around 2004 (or, in the case of Solstice Butterfly, even before that point). While the possibility for subsequent stories being released in these series remains, to varying degrees--“Pasig” and “Cat’s Trail” have seen new material, as has Kubori Kikiam, although the Kikiams don’t really have a narrative that needs an ending--the amount of time that has lapsed between episodes means that many fans will have moved on before seeing a proper resolution to stories they once cared about… and, without a re-release of the increasingly rare back issues, it’s unlikely that new fans will be able to get the whole story either. Many komiks series suffer from a similar chronic lateness, a lamentable situation that is, however, unsurprising given that most komiks are self-published by part-time, albeit passionate, creators.

This is one reason why I enjoy picking up one-shot komiks, works which tell a complete tale—or set of tales—between the covers.  However, these one-shots are rare (although increasing in number) and that’s not surprising, not only because many of today’s komiks creators were weaned on long-running serial comics (such as superhero comics, or shonen/shojo manga), but simply because a short one-shot comic—like a prose short story—can require more discipline, and more confidence, than a longer work. That’s not to say it’s an impossible task, and Con+Sequence--a komik anthology by Wilson Dela Fuente, Gerard De Robles, Butch Mapa, Michael Jason Paz, and a cover by Bard—contains one fine example of the form, Butch Mapa’s “Gamescape”, which is worth the price of admission.

Con+Sequence is made up of four stories, each taking place in a different world and featuring different characters, with nothing in common aside from sharing space between the cover (an eye-catching piece by Bard with blurred lines and muted colors): “Gamescape”, “The Fare”, “Destruktitekture”, and “Techspert”. I’ll be tackling them in reverse order, because that roughly approximates the amount of enjoyment I received from each.

“Techspert” is the second story written by Mapa, with Paz handling the art and Dela Fuente the lettering. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed “Techspert” the least, but it is another example of the unfinished story phenomenon I mentioned above, ending with a smoldering kiss and a “to be continued” caption. I’ve been to a few komik conventions since buying Con+sequence, and I have yet to catch sight of a “Techspert” continuation, nor have I been able to find any mention of it online. This is a shame, as “Techspert” was an intriguing cyber-punk type combination of noir and science fiction (rendered well and appropriately by Paz) which seemed set to plunge the protagonist into a plot that involved crime, conspiracies, and cloning.

The three other stories were self-contained one-shots. Of the three, “Destruktitekture” fares the most poorly. Most short works fall victim to wanting to tell more of a story than the space would allow, but “Destruktitekture” seemed less about telling a story and more about setting up the final image—and, unfortunately, the prior pages/sequences still did nothing to place the final image in a proper context. (And I’m still at a loss as to why this story, obviously set in the far future, where giant transforming robots are possible, is dated “Aug. 8, 2009”.)

Dela Fuente takes on scripting and artistic duties for “The Fare”, a story  about Ismael Santiago, an air taxi driver about to quit his job, who takes on one last fare. The story is an enjoyable union between a far-future setting and a paranormal element, but one which remains grounded (a counter-intuitive word to use given the context, but there you go) in a sympathetic protagonist. Despite the disparity of the elements of the story, Dela Fuente weaves them together in a coherent whole, held together by the theme of “flight”, and that’s what makes it work. A minor quibble is that Dela Fuente sometimes uses lettering that seems much too loud, but a more major issue is that while the art shows that Dela Fuente is a talented artist, the images seem very much unfinished, with practically no background detail (especially lamentable given the fact that a futuristic city, filled with flying vehicles and war propaganda, would have been very interesting to see.)

Finally, the best story in the komik anthology is the very first story, “Gamescape”, with Mapa writing and drawing, and Dela Fuente providing the lettering. Mapa is an excellent artist, using clean lines and detailed shading/crosshatching to create a pleasing look that has depth. His character designs are striking, giving each of the characters a unique feel, even those who wore a similar uniform. Mapa also does facial expressions well, from reckless joy to sheer terror. While the story makes use of one of the more common, and notorious, plot devices in genre short stories, Mapa isn’t employing it for a last-minute-reveal type of surprise—an astute reader will wise up to the context fairly quickly, and will still be able to enjoy the story. What Mapa does is reinterpret a rather mundane situation into an imaginative, action-packed story, and it is fascinating how he takes that underlying situation and uses it to mold everything from the background art, to the dialogue, to the character abilities/personalities. It’s a great example of speculative thinking, and of how, even in the span of a few pages, one can produce a story with good world building and a real sense of high stakes. More than that, it’s a testament to one of the joys of speculative fiction—how practically anything can be transformed into the basis for a rousing story. All you need to do, is add a bit of imagination, and take a look at things from another perspective.