Jack in the Box puts the phrase "Men are products of their environment" to the test. While people may be divided as to the phrase being fact or not, Jack in the Box doesn't even question it.

The story behind Jack in the Box is hard to comment on, as not much is given away. A strange alien race have taken children, but only one has survived their testing, a boy named Jack. Now grown up, the only thing he knows about the real world is given to him from a book of images (see the front cover picture for an example). His world is black and white and very strange. A girl, Amelia, was brought up by a strange race of pink furry creatures, and she became like them, full of colour and vibrancy and life. Now, the idea behind the book is that people are who they are because of their environment, the first issue shows that Jack has been brought up badly, and sees the world in black and white, which obviously it isn't. Amelia has been brought up with love and she is the colour on the world. It's a straight forward message really, and with the lack of any real substance to the plot in this first issue, the writing seems weak. It seems to be following a certain formula, that these two characters will be presented, and Amelia will show Jack the colour and beauty of the world, and he will have gotten back at his alien captors. It may have the potential, but this first issue just lacks the spark that Tony Wicks' Last of the Chickenheads had.

The art is what you'd expect after reading Last of the Chickenheads. It's nice, clean with a few anatomy problems, but nothing too distracting. My main gripe with Last of the Chickenheads art (the bad grayscale) isn't present in this, which is great. However, there is a new problem with the black and white art, sometimes things bleed into each other, and it distracts the attention for a moment, and there isn't much varying line thickness to draw the eye to particular things, or emphasise dstances between objects. The panel composition is brilliant, and this just further emphasises that Tony has a great eye for narrative story telling. It is really let down by the actual writing, however.

Jack in the Box didn't appeal to me as a whole. The story is weak, the idea behind it interesting but in the end seems to be very formulaic, however, Id love to be proven wrong. Tony Wicks does another good job illustrating here, but again has a few downfalls (it's really the same problem as Last of the Chickenheads, and nothing to do with his actual drawing skills). I'd advise waiting to see how the second issue pans out before having a go with this, as it is something that could be really hit or miss. I don't feel this first issue is a good ad for the rest of the series.