Middlewest #1
Image Comics 2018
Written by Skottie Young
Illustrated by Jorge Corona
Coloured by Jean-François Beaulieu
Lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot
The lands between the coasts are vast, slow to change, and full of hidden magic’s. Mistakes have been made, and an unwitting adventurer searches for answers to quell a coming storm that knows his name.
For me personally Skottie is a hit or miss kind of guy, he’s got his comfort zone and doesn’t veer out of it. Still you never what is going to resonate with you until you try the story right, right. I wasn’t prepared for what we see here and while I wouldn’t say I'm gutted by what I see maybe gob-smacked would be more accurate. What we see in this issue draws out some serious emotions from me as a reader and in the course of the issue I found myself drawn into Abel’s world and feeling like a protective Uncle. That is something I have never felt before for a character in a comic book so gentlemen job well done.
I like the way that this book is structured. The opening is our introduction to Abel and it’s dramatic, frightening and incredibly intriguing to me. It is definitely what you want to see in the opening of a first issue and most assuredly one that starts off a new series. This shouldn’t have any problem in getting people to read as the desire to see more is there and I couldn’t have been any more impressed with how this starts. The way Skottie creates the ebb and flow of the story and it’s revelations plot twists is extremely well done. I like that we can never truly trust what our eyes are seeing and I still wonder what the Fox is or represents. So there’s more fair amount of mystery surrounding this and I am hopeful that will remain a constant.
The characterisation here is phenomenal. Abel is a teenage boy and as such well he’s kind of difficult to nail down. When I was about that age I was a hellion, rebellious and by thirteen I thought I knew everything. So while we don’t see that we do get enough sense of him to know that he’s a complicated young man and seeing him go through what he does here well it’s impressive that he managed that. The characters around him while kind of transient feeling are also still fleshed out nicely and of course there’s his dad who we get to know quite well. Overall how we see the characters is as important to the story as the story itself.
My biggest concern was the interior artwork. Just because the book features kids doesn’t mean we have kid centric artwork and seeing as I am one of those who gravitate towards that finer, cleaner and crisper work that highlights attention to detail well I found this to be somewhere kind of smack dab between the two. I like what we see and how we see it and how there is that attention to detail but done in a way that we don’t see anywhere else. Jorge does a marvellous job in bringing this to life, the characters are identifiable, show personality and emotions which is exactly what we should see. The utilisation of the page layouts and now we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a good eye for storytelling. The way backgrounds are utilised is fabulous and really helps show the size and scope of the story.
So with Abel on his way to discover what his life is going to be about now this book ends on something of an odd note. I will say however the beginning and the ending sharing what it does is the kind of symbolic that is fantastic to see. This would earn highest marks in school and 10/10 in my book as it’s incredibly well written and beautifully illustrated.
Image Comics 2018
Written by Skottie Young
Illustrated by Jorge Corona
Coloured by Jean-François Beaulieu
Lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot
The lands between the coasts are vast, slow to change, and full of hidden magic’s. Mistakes have been made, and an unwitting adventurer searches for answers to quell a coming storm that knows his name.
For me personally Skottie is a hit or miss kind of guy, he’s got his comfort zone and doesn’t veer out of it. Still you never what is going to resonate with you until you try the story right, right. I wasn’t prepared for what we see here and while I wouldn’t say I'm gutted by what I see maybe gob-smacked would be more accurate. What we see in this issue draws out some serious emotions from me as a reader and in the course of the issue I found myself drawn into Abel’s world and feeling like a protective Uncle. That is something I have never felt before for a character in a comic book so gentlemen job well done.
I like the way that this book is structured. The opening is our introduction to Abel and it’s dramatic, frightening and incredibly intriguing to me. It is definitely what you want to see in the opening of a first issue and most assuredly one that starts off a new series. This shouldn’t have any problem in getting people to read as the desire to see more is there and I couldn’t have been any more impressed with how this starts. The way Skottie creates the ebb and flow of the story and it’s revelations plot twists is extremely well done. I like that we can never truly trust what our eyes are seeing and I still wonder what the Fox is or represents. So there’s more fair amount of mystery surrounding this and I am hopeful that will remain a constant.
The characterisation here is phenomenal. Abel is a teenage boy and as such well he’s kind of difficult to nail down. When I was about that age I was a hellion, rebellious and by thirteen I thought I knew everything. So while we don’t see that we do get enough sense of him to know that he’s a complicated young man and seeing him go through what he does here well it’s impressive that he managed that. The characters around him while kind of transient feeling are also still fleshed out nicely and of course there’s his dad who we get to know quite well. Overall how we see the characters is as important to the story as the story itself.
My biggest concern was the interior artwork. Just because the book features kids doesn’t mean we have kid centric artwork and seeing as I am one of those who gravitate towards that finer, cleaner and crisper work that highlights attention to detail well I found this to be somewhere kind of smack dab between the two. I like what we see and how we see it and how there is that attention to detail but done in a way that we don’t see anywhere else. Jorge does a marvellous job in bringing this to life, the characters are identifiable, show personality and emotions which is exactly what we should see. The utilisation of the page layouts and now we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a good eye for storytelling. The way backgrounds are utilised is fabulous and really helps show the size and scope of the story.
So with Abel on his way to discover what his life is going to be about now this book ends on something of an odd note. I will say however the beginning and the ending sharing what it does is the kind of symbolic that is fantastic to see. This would earn highest marks in school and 10/10 in my book as it’s incredibly well written and beautifully illustrated.
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