IDW Publishing 2015
Written by Chuck Dixon
Illustrated by Esteve Polls
Coloured by Diego Rodriguez
Scully and his fourteen-year-old charge, Wynn, are survivors on an Earth that has become a barren, lifeless wasteland. Together they travel across a brutal world in search of Wynn’s parents, only to find that the coldest place on Earth is the human heart.
Their search has been sidetracked as the pair help Trina and her previously missing and presumed dead husband, Reynold, find some missing children. On the run from some local savages, the group has found allies in a frozen shipyard but the savages weren’t far behind.
I like that this is a world where the next ice age occurred and stayed giving us a different view of how the world has become. Scully and Wynn have become this new kind of dynamic duo bringing us into their world and their lives on their journey to find her parents and along the way we get this intense and sometimes scary look at how mankind has regressed to it’s most primal state. This issue showcases savages who roam the frozen wasteland and take whatever they can find to survive.
Esteve actually does some of the most intricate artwork here and you can almost see the dormant genes we’ve got inside us coming back to help man adapt to such a harsh landscape. Some remain completely homo-sapien while others look neanderthal in nature. The ship they’ve boarded and are using to recoup and recover from recent events is now under attack and the brutality shown here is remarkable. We see such emotion in both the crew and the savages and the violence is done very old school where he shows the result instead of the gore he really brings this to life so beautifully.
I find myself really surprised by this issue and how much I enjoyed it. There’s so much action going on around us here it’s exciting and that we see more, just a hint, of something we got a peek at coming back to set up the next arc. With Reynold still suspicious and combative with Scully in the midst of the ships invasion just adds to the drama of it all making the read that much more interesting.
Chuck has really managed to create this world wonderfully and bring us into it in such a strong way. The characterization is stellar and the pacing of the story through these chapters has been excellent keeping them short sweet and moving forward at a great pace. That the next chapter seems to be heading towards a look at what would could be left of some form of government or group that has remained in the shadows building and growing perhaps finally giving us a chance to see learn more information about the world at large keeping this story growing in scope again makes for an exciting new chapter in their current history.
This continues to be a thrilling and exciting look at a world we could end up in with a new Ice Age and it’s both frightening and interesting to see how Chuck and Esteve depict it.