Image Comics 2015
Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrated by Steve Skroce
Coloured by Matt Hollingsworth
This series is just so darn imaginative and crazy that it’s pretty much required reading in my opinion. This issue opens with a look back as Amber and her brother are stowing away on a train and meet up with another hobo looking to reach a safer area. This is our real first solid look at how the American’s advanced and how much of Canada the annexed straight away. We also hear a theory of why they’ve done this. This peak into things is what fascinates me the most.
Moving to the present Amber and Dunn are looking for Chief and LePage. LePage finds them and tells them that McFadden has been captured by the Americans. Which by the way is a a very good transition to seeing her current predicament. She’s being interrogated by the that same woman with the close cropped white hair and seeing her again makes me dislike all that much more. Sigh the United States so full of itself always thinking they are in the right regardless of what happened it’s a somewhat accurate representation unfortunately.
McFadden well what we see her going through goes way beyond cruel and unusual punishment and goes well into what I would think akin to Nazi War Crimes. The techniques might be well past modern but nonetheless it’s despicable treatment of another human being. What she goes through however during the initial torture to reveal the location of her compatriots shows us what kind of stuff she’s made of.
Back at headquarters they old gang is split on what to do, stay or hightail it out of there. There’s plenty of validation on both sides of the argument but it’s Amber’s vote that breaks the tie. We do see what it is that breaks McFadden and i’ll be damned if this bitch that ran that program doesn’t suffer a long and painful death for this kind of ploy. I may not speak French but LaPage’s words being almost nothing else still convey the right meaning almost as if you can suss out the meaning in the situation they are in. That they aren’t translated is something I applaud as well.
What’s left is a race, can they get their new toys working and under their control before the American forces arrive to wipe them out? Why is she so damn concerned about this group of “cutthroats?” There’s got to be more to this story than Brian has let us see so far and I can’t wait till we learn what the haired woman’s true motivations are. Make no mistake they’ll never change how I feel about her but i’m dying to know nonetheless.
Steve’s interiors are blasted phenomenal. His attention to detail and the ebb and flow of the books emotions are so prevalent. You feel McFadden’s emotions so clearly and it makes you root for all the more while seeing this woman break her angers the reader visually to no end. The slightly more soft opening of the past in contrast to the harder more focused now yeah that’s a nice thing to see. Oh and the last pages, two page spread, yeah that’s the kind of imagination that makes me as a reader sit up and take notice.
This is wildly creative, imaginative and exceptionally well crafted series that takes readers places they aren’t ready to go.