Vault Comics/Blood Moon Creative Inc. 2017
Created & Written by David M. Booher
Illustrated by Nathan C. Gooden
Coloured by Mike Spicer
Lettered by Deron Bennett
PRV continues to spread unchecked. The infected rebel openly. When a sniper targets the team led by Quarantine Agent Billy Bannister, he'll push his power to the brink to save his fellow agents. Meanwhile, his brother Paul must face a shattered new reality, as he learns even the smallest choices have enormous consequences.
Vault comics is the premiere new home for Science Fiction storytelling. Now science fiction comes in all shapes, sizes and varieties so there really is a broad range that you can cover. What David does here while involves folks with powers there are no superheroes. I mean if everyone has powers it’s just society as normal right so what happens when something comes along to upset the balance? PRV is much akin to anything that has come down the pike and alarmingly like HIV/AIDS in that contracting it gives you a stigma and automatically puts you on a quarantine list. So this may be a story featuring those with powers it’s really a story about society reacting to that which it doesn’t know and cannot control while trying to assert itself on that.
Fear, fear of the unknown, of what we cannot control, of being different and of being exposed to something that will change us whether we like it or not. Fear is the ultimate factor, tool and response that makes the world the most dangerous of places to live. I mean look at the United States, Fear elected #45 and continues to wreak havoc that’s not been seen in 100’s of years, not since the Black Plague actually or for Native Americans smallpox and every other European disease they’d yet to encounter. I love the parallels here and I love that this story makes me think of the past, present and future of the world we live in. That’s powerful storytelling my friends.
So while we’ve got a story story going on that just so happens to have some action mixed in it’s up to Nathan to make this come to life. He does too with a really nice strong hand. The linework is nice impressive and he has the quality to his work that makes the people look weird, natural but weird and very stylised. The way page layouts are used through angles, perspective and utilising backgrounds as he does really helps us see the bigger picture.
From the premise through its execution this story continues to grow and surprise me. From almost humble beginnings that have blossomed into something so much farther reaching its not surprise to me that this fits right into Vaults vision for its line of books. From the little moments where we see the story develop through different eyes and reasons to the bigger picture as a whole there’s so much going on here that you really have to pay attention or you might miss something.
Tell your local shoppe to carry Vault’s line of books and enter a world as vast and mysterious as living your own life should hopefully be.