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Life is Strange: Coming Home #2 finishes out the doubled-sized issues of this arc and prepares us for the inevitable big climax of the series. Emma Vieceli and Claudia Leonardi are doing, quite frankly, an astounding job juggling so many characters, arcs, and plots weaving throughout two universes. This is a job that requires a serious master of the art form, and they are pulling it off in a way that feels effortless.
Selfish Grief
During Life is Strange: Coming Home #2, Max has a moment where she visits the memorial moment for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. While there, she strikes up a small conversation with a random passerby that I think illuminates a big part of the Life is Strange franchise and a major theme of this comic in particular.
Grief comes in many forms from a variety of sources. But such grief is shared amongst a large group of people about something so large; personal grief can be seen as selfish. It’s the paradoxical nature of the human mind; we are hard-wired to care first and foremost about our survival but still feel like crap for doing it because we are taught that empathy for others is positive. So, in great disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina or, in Max’s case, the loss of Arcadia Bay and her Chloe, the mere thought regarding the self becomes something to reject, something to abhor, because the victims deserve more sympathy and grief.
But as Max has pointed out to her, you can simultaneously feel grief on a large and small scale. They are not mutually exclusive, and it is certainly not selfish. Take the events of the original Life is Strange game. For instance, everyone remembers that last choice. Do you go with Chloe and let Arcadia Bay drown, or do you let Chloe die and save all of Arcadia Bay from certain death? While on the macro scale, you can see that the obvious choice is the one that saves more lives. But on the micro-scale, Chloe is Max’s best friend, who she just reunited with, and her lover in the continuity of this comic series. That’s why that choice is so divisive amongst fans because it brings into question morality and split decision-making skills and what we view as selfish or not.
Seeing this reflected in current Max with this decision to return to her Chloe but abandon her friends in this universe brings a lot of those questions back in her mind. For such a short two-page sequence, this really packs a punch.
A Careful Balancing Act
As I said in the intro, the creative team are doing a delicate balance of various characters that is quite amazing. Life is Strange: Coming Home #2 proves just how skillful they are being by furthering everyone’s arc, including minor characters, and even going so far as introducing Steph into the mix. This naturally ties into the upcoming game but also is a nice call back to Chloe and Rachel’s time in Before the Strom.
I’m interested in where the Tristan and Lawrence interaction is going. Obviously, Tristan is a bit infatuated and is crushing hard for him, which provides some nice comedic moments in this issue. Tristan being called out on his obvious attraction while also not knowing what to do since he is popping between universes and, therefore, different Lawrences is in some weird way quite relatable. It’s strange how the craziest out there concepts can sometimes hit closer to home than one would expect.
The ending has me intrigued about where the final bit of this series is going to go. In the game, I read the storm as the entropy of the universe, the end of time itself, fighting back against Max’s actions. Now we have the storm reappearing in multiple universes at the same time, the veil between them is literally weakening, and it’s all because a bunch of people with powers are gathered at the same spot at the same time. Maybe time or the multiverse can sense what the group is about to do and is trying to protect itself. Sort of life antibodies protecting you from infection, but you know on a massive, multiversal scale.
Life is Strange: Coming Home #2 Is Double The Size Which Means Double The Heart
Life is Strange: Coming Home #2 is technically the end of this volume of the series, with the next arc beginning at a new #1. However, it is pure setup for what will sadly be the end of the series. But it doesn’t lose itself in that setup, allowing every character to get their moment and even allowing for cute scenes like Rachel and Chloe drunkenly waking up outside the bus. As a Chloe and Rachel shipper, one thing I have appreciated about this series is that by using the multiple universes conceit, it can please multiple kinds of fans. Let’s hope the coming end can please just as much as the rest of this series.
