
Image Comics 2020
Written by Simon Roy & Daniel Bensen
Illustrated by Artyom Trakhanov
Coloured by Jason Wordie
Lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Of all the tribes that dwell in the hot ruins of far-future North America, the Hudsoni reign supreme, but even they fear and obey the godlike Devas. When the Devas warn of an old-world demon in the conquered city of Shikka-Go, Hudsoni war chief First Knife decides to deal with the threat personally.
I was tempted to pass on this one and here's why, at first glance I wasn't all that sure about what Artyom was doing with the interiors. I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be a more cartoon or Aragones style or what but I was hesitant. Still I was intrigued and wanted to see more of this and figure it out for myself and I am glad I did. As I was I reading this I hadn't quite put two and two together, not until at the back of the issue where it showed the map. So bravo boys and being able to be that clever and yet that simple all at the same time and I mean I really found myself appreciating what see here more.
I like the way that this is being told. There is something very familiar and yet very much the past I what we see and the way that we see it. The story & plot development that we see through the sequence of events unfolding and how the reader learns information is done very well. While we don't fully understand what is happening here what this does, however, is allow the reader to become engaged so that their own mind and imagination takes over and this is how you get a reader invested in the book. The character development is nice to see. Having never met these people before the baseline personality being laid down shows some wriggle room for moving forward and I like that. The pacing for this is really well done and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists and turns along the way and maybe a revelation or two it also helps to create the books overall ebb & flow.
The more I read the more I understood what happened to the world but now what is going on with these people so I like that dichotomy because the more of what we think and the less we do means we have that desire to come back and find out more, and if we're correct in our assumptions.
Now the artwork is very stylised and it does remind me of the old comics that used to appear in gentlemen's magazines. It definitely has a certain look to it and the more I see it the more I like, it grows on you and by the end of the issue you think that it couldn't be seen any other way. The linework is nice and it's light and then we have some really nice attention to detail in some finer lines and altogether it brings about some nice attention to detail. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a good, solid eye for storytelling. I do like the way that the backgrounds are being utilised here and how they provide depth perception, scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the book.
There is this way that we see things happen that kind of spells out for us what could have happened. There are as many more questions to ask for every one seemingly answered and it has the element of suspense building about this that fires up all the cylinders in the readers' minds. There really is a lot going on here and it's a bit much to take it all in but overall there this one thing we see time and time again, a man with power whether earned or not is something he is loathe to part with. This was or is a delightful surprise and it is something I believe you should check out at your shop or take a chance and order it.