Dynamite Entertainment 2017
Written by Ray Fawkes
Illustrated by Johnny Desjardins
Coloured by Mohan
Turok
Written by Chuck Wendig
Illustrated by Alvaro Sarraseca
Coloured by Triona T. Farrell
All Letters by Taylor Esposito
What Ray has been doing with this book is completely fascinating to me. It doesn’t so much jump around in time as much as I thought it would be you see the disparity clearly represented. That Spektor died last issue and that event affects both Solar and Magus the way it does well he keeps tying these characters together in this insanely great way.
Also I kind of like the way we see his representation of these characters. Solar being who she is and a powerful being, the most powerful among them, sets her apart and ends up making more aloof is a great transitional thing. Like seeing Magnus become more cyborg in nature it’s the evolution of the character from their roots that make it so gosh darn interesting to watch play out. The of course of the ones still living only Samson seems to have that air of mystery about him that makes him the least well known and most misunderstood and quite possibly the biggest key to the whole story.
Ray can weave all these elements in and out of the story in ways that flow like stream or a raging river or just a lazy afternoon tube ride interrupted by some rapids. It’s this ability that makes him a sought out writer and one we like to read works by. The unpredictability of what he’s capable of has a thrill to it that even if he’s setting things up one way he can still surprise the heck out of you by either going a different way or getting to where you expect just by a route that comes out of the blue. Add into that the characterisation we get from the characters, their actions and the people around them and it becomes an even larger wow factor.
Johnny is an amazing artist and what we can do makes me shudder with delight. From the futuristic to the ancient past he has the range in his mind, imagination and attention to detail that can bring any and every situation to life beautifully. His eye for storytelling using page layouts with their angles, perspective and those backgrounds really make the journey that much more pleasurable to take. The creativity and imagination delight the senses and take you from concern to fear in the blink of an eye.
While these are and aren’t the original characters they do represent the right way of either updating the original or using a legacy character to keep them not only rooted in the past but relatable to today. There’s a sense of respect for the past and the promise of the future in how we see these characters. For me it also has that effect of wanting to find their first run adventures and see what they were like then to really immerse myself in what they represent then and now. Dynamite’s respect for the characters shines like a beacon and it calls to us.