Insane Comics 2017
Release Date Nov. 20th 2017
By Les Garner
Now you’ve heard me say time and again you need to walk up and down the aisles of artist alley at conventions. Les would be one of those who’s work you might likely see and then as luck would have it he’s been picked up by Insane Comics to have this distributed and promoted. Though this is coming from Les himself so I feel kind of honoured that he chose me to do a review of his work. My point being that you never know who in Artist Alley is going be the next one published.
Instead of actually taking us through the Apocalypse Les brings us in years later where there are a mix of people who remember life before the fall and those that have only known this. I like it actually not having to be walked through what happened to get here, from the imagery we can take a guess as well as the ash in the air making it hard to breathe.
It’s how we are introduced to the story with our main character talking about her life. Her life with the man she calls Papa and what he’s taught her is the bulk of the narration for the beginning of the book. The father/daughter relationship is how we get to know our girl, whom for the life of I couldn’t find a name used for her, and I gotta say there’s a lot wordage here so you have to pay attention. I know the tendency is to skim through it but if you you’ll miss things about this world that are explained in ways that will come in handy. Sometimes this really is like a novella of sorts and when it’s good its damn good.
Les is able to convey things through this narration that impresses me. From the hardship of living in this post apocalyptic world to the lessons Papa imparted upon her. The story and it’s content have some amazing effect on the emotions and feelings for me as a reader. You get this awful sense of loneliness from her and that people cannot be trusted or they are just unprepared or unwilling to adapt to this new reality of the life they live in. Les brings us to this world giving us a great sense of clarity of his vision and it works on a lot of levels.
I’m always impressed when someone has the talent, skill and ability to do the entire book themselves. Even more so when the utilisation of page layouts look like this to accommodate the narration and still have the level detail that we see in them. How angles, perspective and backgrounds are used to fully showcase the story visually Just as Les intends for the maximum impact possible is impressive indeed. The linework here and just the overall effect of the colouring and how the dust/ash is used are all effectively done. Though I know it’s the Afterworld and all but seriously couldn’t she find a shirt that fit better? That trope is kind of overplayed, the whole hodge podge daisy duke look anyway.
Les does a great job moving the story forward after the initial narrated beginning. So that this is kind of a tale of two things. The background information is provided and then there’s this whole new direction she has to take and put everything that she was taught by Papa into use. Not accustomed to roughing in her own it’ll be interesting to see how things progress now that she’s on the road and on her own. He also introduces us to new dangers in the world thanks to what happened and not just those road warrior types either but something new, something evil, something monstrous.
This is why I love independent creators who pour their heart and soul into their work. You see the effort, the love and everything they have on each page. There’s a great premise and very, very solid work here and it’s interesting, fun and the spin put on it is great.