It’s almost as though Dingess is refusing to do a full story in the issue. The Sacagawea subplot, which takes up a scene–with flashback–is more complete than the main plot of the issue, with the landing party waiting to see if the blue bird person and one of the humans can make beat the monster. It’s a talking heads book, just with everyone talking about what the reader gets to see for him or herself when Dingess takes the action to the bird person and the human.
Manifest Destiny is not a story with a strong supporting cast. Dingess rarely deals with the supporting cast, which is enormous. And they aren’t particularly distinctive. Even though Roberts goes out of his way to make some visually distinctive… there are like five or six memorable people here, no more. So a talking heads book with random people talking.
The hard cliffhanger will undoubtedly get resolved quickly next issue and that issue will then have its own weak, hard cliffhanger. Dingess doesn’t let the reader enjoy the book, which is unfortunate. He’s too manipulative when he doesn’t need to be. It almost feels desperate that this point.
It’s almost as though Dingess is refusing to do a full story in the issue. The Sacagawea subplot, which takes up a scene–with flashback–is more complete than the main plot of the issue, with the landing party waiting to see if the blue bird person and one of the humans can make beat the monster. It’s a talking heads book, just with everyone talking about what the reader gets to see for him or herself when Dingess takes the action to the bird person and the human.
Talk about not much of an issue… Dingess’s pacing never impresses on Manifest Destiny but I think he might have set a new record for himself.
I figured out what’s wrong with Dingess’s writing. He can’t do the scenes. It’s like he’s got an amazing outline–he can do the plot, he can do the dialogue, he can even do the narration (most of it)–but he can’t do actual scenes. Or maybe it’s a strange disconnect between how Dingess writes and how Roberts composes the scenes.
It’s another too fast issue of Manifest Destiny. Or maybe it’s just how Dingess uses the cliffhanger. He’s actually doing character development, both in scene and through the journal narration device, but it doesn’t get to go anywhere because the last few pages are all setting up the cliffhanger.
It’s a bridging issue of Manifest Destiny. Dingess makes it seem full, starting with a different journal than the normal one, but he doesn’t do much with it. He gets the reader’s brain going in the first few pages, then doesn’t ask anything more of him or her.