Aftershock Comics 2018
Created & Written by Steve Orlando
Created & Illustrated by Matthew Dow Smith
Coloured by Lauren Affe
Lettered by Thomas Mauer
The Post-Post-Apocalypse rockets along in the electroconductive form of hyper-modern folklore! This is beyond mythpunk...it's nuclear punk! When you're Sasha Vasnetsov, trying to save your twin brother from a work camp for the socially malformed, the world and your brother's life are the same heart-wrenching thing.
The next world-saving step? Sasha and Maria, the Super Soldier have to break into an impossible train that teleports every few seconds and spring her war-suit from cold storage. To liberate his brother, Sasha is going to help Maria regain the power she once had during the Great Iron War, the power that's been a cursed legacy for her for a decade. But if they survive, and Sasha has to choose between the war-suit and Maria...does he save the woman that saved his life, or take the next step in saving his brother?
I am so invested in this story. Sometimes you see the title of a book that’s coming out and you get excited over it and this is definitely one of those. There is something unique in the premise and the way Steve tells this that just captures your mind and imagination in such a way that you allow to expand your mind, your eager to explore the world and the characters we meet along the way somehow become akin to family. This my friends, frenemies or even haters is the true power of storytelling. To take something offbeat and out of genre and to create something new and unique for folks to enjoy.
I have to say that as tense as the meeting with the Conductor was it beautifully done. I mean this is the edge of your seat tension where the situation could go a number of ways and you don’t know for sure what’s going to happen. You think you do, because we all think we’re smarter than we are, and the fact that Steve can make you almost sure of yourself in what’s going to happen and flip you well damn this is why the man has my admiration. The structure of the story and the overall ebb & flow of this book is sensational. There never feels like anything is skipped over and the transitions have a super natural flow to them and the real time effect fits this superbly.
The interiors here are extremely well done. I like it when the artist becomes synonymous with a book, in my opinion no one else can do what Matthew does as effectively. Plus I just love the attention to detail here and while the folks are stylised but it’s straight up linework in the backgrounds that help draw the eye to where it needs to be. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a stellar eye for storytelling. The way that backgrounds are utilised really do expand the story beautifully and make the moments just that much more.
The characterisation and the way that way the book flows takes you on a journey that is not just one where the thunder rolls but if this doesn’t punch you in gut with the feels then your just plain old dead inside. This really is the epitome of powerful storytelling. The premise is fantastic and familiar, family trumps and whether for you that’s blood or by choice it’s all the same, so right off the bat there quite a number of folks who can relate. Then there’s the world, see setting, that they live in and it’s as wonderful genre bending unique as you can get. All in all this is how you build a world, populate it with hella cool characters then create a scenario which cuts those characters loose and see what kind of havoc they can do.