Aftershock Comics 2018
Created & Written by Christopher Sebela
Created, Illustrated & Lettered by Hayden Sherman
Panacea Cryonics offered its customers life after death by keeping their heads frozen until the day technology could rebuild them, free of disease and death. However, as these everyday people from the past are revived, they’re not handed the keys to a new life, but a gun, body armour and an ultimatum. They must fight in a war against unknown opponents for unknown reasons, to secure their place in a brave new world that doesn’t want them around.
Love the idea here and how it’s presented to us. I do wish we’d be given more time with the opening here. I’d have loved to see, learn and get a closer look at what is the present and how the decisions leading up to the story were done. Honestly I’d have loved to see who’s decision it was to do what’s being done to these folks here. Part of me feels a little cheated so hopefully at some point Christopher is going to take us back to revisit the whole concept and tell us how things go from Cryogenic Storage to the battlefield.
The wake up process could’ve been a little longer a well and why was he wearing that jumpsuit when he came out of his pod when well he should’ve been stark naked? Don’t ask me way but I feel like this President Triste, what kind of name is that anyway, hijacked the video feed was nothing more than a recording itself and not really a live person or live feed? There really are so many questions about what is going on and what these people are going through that are screaming to be answered.
Christopher’s writing for me is usually a lot stronger than this whole disjointed moving very quickly from one thing to the next. I mean it doesn’t help that Hayden’s style of art here is just chaotic and ADD as the writing comes across. Yes the whole issue makes no sense to me and yes I want to know more and yes I’ll be b ck so naturally this means the entire did exactly what it should have and made me question everything and want answers like yesterday. There is also something about the whole concept that I want to see more of.
Hayden’s work here is not something I am a fan of. I want to be, I thought his work on John Carter The End was great but here it’s too Jr.Jr. With very little attention to detail. I can barely make out anything on the page to tell what’s happening and page seven turns into page eight I have no idea what went on. Without the use of backgrounds that give me some sort of scope to what we’re seeing I don’t can’t ascertain what kind of terrain they are in, a city or an alien planet who knows. There are so many opportunities here to shine and I feel like its showing he just doesn’t have what it takes.
We all know I am this huge fan of Aftershock but this I am just not impressed enough with. Christopher is a good solid writer and he’s got some extremely entertaining books out there and that this one feels like it needed more time to be fleshed out thought out in the pages, how the story was presented, paced and overall just likes it more idea planning than ready for execution. I will read next issue just to see if it’s improved any but I'm not holding my breath which is unfortunate given how much like Christopher and the company.