Antarctic Press 2019
Created & Written by Arthur Bellfield
Illustrated by Flavio Silva
Coloured by Luca Bulgheroni & Ernest Jocson
Lettered by Letterdrone
Chloe Anderson is a troubled woman who dates super villains and often calls upon them to help her solve cases as a crisis manager for superhuman millennials. Her life has led her to give up on love, so now she dates only men to whom she won't form an attachment. Then she meets the one: American One, a superhero. In the middle of a date, he gets into a superhuman fight and disappears.
As we learned it turned out that American One is not a superhero but indeed a super-villain and things go horribly awry for those around her. Epiphany died and yet we see her and Chloe now in New Orleans looking for someone Chloe used to date. I guess when your friends die and come back that looking for the villain responsible requires another person of ill-repute like the men that Chloe has a habit of dating. I bring this up because I am enjoying the way that Arthur manages to make all the aspects of Chloe’s life important to the story. Granted it is surrounding her life but to have things done in such a way as we see it happening here it is rather impressive.
The way that this story is being told and how we learn information and see the action woven through the characters lives keep us readers’ on our toes. The entire ebb & flow of the book feels so strong and solid and keeps out attention throughout in some very nice ways. I also think that this is a very fast moving issue, and by that I mean it reads very quickly thanks to the pacing, subject matter and how involved the reader in it. Also the fact that the reader is able to become so invested in the story so quickly demonstrates the strength and quality of the storytelling here.
While Chloe and Epiphany are up to the necks in it we also see what is going on with American One and his mysterious new acquaintance. There are a few things I find interesting in this and that’s the fact that since he was posing as a hero you’d think he should have their weaknesses down pat and know how to defeat them easily enough. There is an even bigger story here that I'd like to see ore of.
I do like the interior artwork here as well. I am a big fan of the way that the linework we see with it’s varying weights are utilised within these pages. The attention to detail here is great to see and that it really brings the characters and the settings to life extremely well. Sure there are times things seem a little kitsch based but hey that’s okay it’s comics for crying out loud. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a great eye for storytelling. Also that we see backgrounds being utilised so effectively here is wonderfully done in how they man age to expand the moments and provide a size and scope for the city. The colour work is nicely done as well I do like how we see some of the colour gradation effects and the way light sources are utilised to create shading and shadows. Also seeing magical effects pop the way they do is fantastic.
This is another one of those original stories that we haven’t seen done before. I mean Chloe dates super-villains and this has a domino effect on those around her, family included and in ways that we are still waiting to see fully. The writing is so solid with the plot & story development, pacing and characterisation along with the interior artwork make this another one from Antarctic Press that you don’t wanna be sleeping on. If your local brick and mortar isn’t carrying these tell them they need to be.