Picking up right where we left off at last week —

Underneath the sleek, art deco cover to Elijah Brubaker’s Reich #5, we find a story that’s actually pretty heavy on intrigue — both of the political and sexual variety. On the sexual front, our guy Wilhelm’s insatiable appetites are finally straining his largely-sham marriage to the breaking point, even as his philosophy of, for wont of a better term, scientific libertine-ism begins to bear fruit in terms of small-scale social changes in Germany. His “success” is not without its detractors, though, one of them being his then-beloved Communist party, who sever ties with him in the face of the right-wing repression sweeping the country. Which brings us, I suppose, to the political intrigue, as this installment sees both Hitler’s rise to power and, subsequently, the totalitarian measures enacted in the wake of the Reichstag fire, necessitate Reich’s flight from Berlin back to Vienna. Throw in his final break with former mentor Freud and this chapter of Brubaker’s saga is one of tremendous import, delineated with ever-increasing confidence and clarity. Hell, he even makes a six-page sequence of a conversation around a barroom table look interesting. Chances are this was the point at which Silver Sprocket knew they were publishing one of the most important comics out there.

Don’t let the lush watercolors on the cover of Reich #6 fool you, what we’re witnessing is a devastating scene, as young Willy observes the deterioration and death of his father — which comes into play in the narrative toward the tail end of this issue via another extended flashback sequence. Most of our time, however, is spent in his adult years, specifically post-1933, which saw him on the move quite a bit —from Vienna to Zurich to the Swiss Alps to Paris to London to Prague to Berlin (to fetch his mistress and make a quick exit) to Oslo, where his extended estrangement from his daughters finally ends and they (and, by extension, us) are given a privileged look into his latest mission, cancer research. The term “bions” is heard for the first time and, while it’s not yet mentioned by name, the “discovery” of orgone energy also takes place in this chapter. Brubaker masterfully plays with shadows and shading like never before this time out, illustrates a scene of the Nazis burning Reich’s books with bone-chilling clarity, and even gives us a microscopic view of the mysterious “energy emissions” that would form the basis of his protagonist’s latter-years obsession. More absolutely stirring stuff for your four-dollar investment. Oh, and did I mention that Freud dies in this one, as well?

Yup, that’s a Warhol-esque image of an old school Duncan yo-yo on the cover of Reich #7, and in the Arizona desert circa 1954 we learn that Reich’s on, Peter, is quite fond of the toy. This is a “flash-forward” issue that sees a radical change in the look of the comic as Brubaker breaks away from the six-panel grid as decisively as Reich himself broke away from the continent of his birth. Things are pretty far along here — the “Cloudbuster” machine is up and running, as Reich attempts to bring rain to a region that doesn’t get much of it, but don’t let his new areas of study fool you; this is still the same old Wilhelm, as his interactions with Peter and the woman waiting their table at a cafe prove. His obsession with unexplored scientific frontiers is eclipsed only with his obsession with himself, and there’s a sense that he’s doing some real psychological damage to his child — though Brubaker, to his credit, doesn’t hit us over the head with that point, rather trusting his deft touch with dialogue and his intricate attention to facial expressions and body language to communicate all we need to know. A far more self-contained installment than any to date, this reads very much like a “stand-alone story” dropped into the the middle a sprawling epic. A gutsy move, to be sure — and a dizzyingly successful one, at that.

An older, but still obviously quite cavalier, version of our “hero” peers from the corners of his ever-inquisitive eyes at — something (or maybe someone) on the cover of Reich #8, and Brubaker uses this issue to bridge the gap between numbers six and seven, bringing us fully up to speed on everything Willy’s been up to since arriving on American shores, from his brief period in Forest Hills to the foundation of his Orgonon research center in Maine. He’s been a busy guy, to say the least, and in these pages we are introduced to his second wife, Ilse, for the first time; get a look at, and an explanation of the workings of, the so-called “orgone box”; learn about Reich’s one and only meeting with Einstein, told from the POV of Albert himself — and even meet the FDA agents (drawn in a style I can only assume Brubaker came upon by way of the great, criminally under-appreciated Jeff Nicholson) who will come to play such a significant role in our title character’s eventual downfall. The now fervently anti-Communist Reich says that he is averse to publicity these days, but could the seeds of his demise be sown by his decision to consent to an interview for The New Republic magazine? Read this comic and find out!

In seven days we’ll wrap things up by looking at the final four chapters of Reich, but in the meantime, should you feel the urge to see for yourself why I’m making such a fuss about this series (and, trust me, you should feel that urge), all twelve issues are available at https://wowcool.com/product-category/comics/indie/elijah-brubaker/