Aftershock Comics 2021
Written by Peter Blackie & Rob Blackie
Illustrated by Daniel Maine
Coloured by Carlos Lopez
Lettered by Taylor Esposito
Separated, Te’a and Gummy find themselves on divergent paths. Under pressure from Cluthian, Te’a is forced into carrying out a mission that most pilots wouldn’t even dream of attempting—but Te’a is not “most pilots”.
I have been enjoying this story right up until the last page here. The last page here ruins everything and by that I mean it just stops, there’s no ending, no resolution, just stops telling the story. Will there be a volume two? Will we get the opportunity to see how the aftermath is shown, heck is there even an aftermath? This has been such a good, interesting and fascinating tale and honestly it needs two more issues, this fitting everything into four issues is for the birds. Alright now that I have vented that, for now, it’s time to move onto the story here. This is such a well crafted universe and has such a great night time soap opera feel to it with all these behind the scenes machinations that cause drama and set the stage for what is coming next. There are a lot of moving parts here that are in motion and they all conspire to really pull all the different players into the same sphere of influence.
I am a big fan of the way that this is being told. How we see the story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is extremely well rendered. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a great job bringing their personalities to the forefront. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story the more we so desperately want to see.
I like how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. The layers keep opening up new avenues to explore and whether those are being explored now or later they add all this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. The way that we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is exceptionally well achieved.
The interiors here are really exemplary. The linework is incredible and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality in the attention to detail is truly outstanding. How we see backgrounds being utilised to enhance and expand the moments as well as how they work within the composition of the panels brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The creativity and imagination that we see throughout the book is marvellous and that gateway for instance is utterly gorgeous. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a superb understanding of how colour works.
This is a great book, my ranting aside that just goes to show how the guys have been able to get me this invested and engaged in what we've seen over the course of four issues. That the story is this strong and it involved and that we’ve come to know the characters like we have has been a double edged sword when it comes to a limited series versus an ongoing. We need more great classic feeling science fiction tales like this on stands.