It’s gonna be a dog eat man world from now on.
Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Rafael de Latorre
Colors: Rob Schwager
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
One day, the Animals woke up. They started thinking. They started talking. They started taking revenge. Now, a dog and his girl are trying to get away–out of New York City, and all the way to San Francisco, to the only person who might be able to protect and save her.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
AfterShock gets its next series rolling with the debut of Animosity, which brings one of my favorite writers a new book to dabble in. Marguerite Bennett has been putting together some fun things the last couple of years, though it’s her Bombshells work that makes me a huge, huge fan, and I’ve enjoyed her other AfterShock book with Insexts. With this series, she’s working with artist Rafael de Latorre as he has the difficult job of bringing to life a wide range of animals. Animals are definitely some of the most difficult things to illustrate, or at least illustrate well, and giving them more personalities here only adds to that to a good degree. With some solid skill, de Latorre definitely nails this aspect of it.
With Animosity, we get the familiar concept that has to work the execution in order to stand out. End of the world stories aren’t just all the rage these days but rather something that has been around all time time, just more noticeable than others. Animosity gives us the sudden happening kind of way of things happening as it’s just a normal day in San Francisco that suddenly turns terrible. De Latorre really gets to run with it well here as we get a two-page spread of twelve different things going on in the area that on the next two two-page spreads shows us how radically it changes as the animals begin to take revenge or act out in more human ways in some forms. The end times happens quickly and that dominates this installment as we see a range of animals having at it, from the birds to a tiger that was kept by someone that had its babies sold off. There are a lot of little grudges that we get in the multi-panel spreads earlier in the book and it’s expanded on well later on with the tiger sequence that helps to reinforce why some, if not most, are going to be very, very, angry.
Where the heart and humanity is going to come through is with a young girl named Jesse who is very close to her dog Sandor. When everything goes bad, the simple love of the two is made clear and you know, beyond anything else that this book will throw at you, that the bond between these two will not be broken. There is a honest and true love that makes it easy to understand how Sandor will protect her, even as her father views him as a threat as the whole world has been turned upside down, and that he’ll go to the lengths of defending her against the tiger that wants to have a bit more revenge. There’s a lot to like in seeing how Sandor’s personality comes about here and since he’s not a pup there’s potential for some good exploration of him as a character, which will be useful since Jesse is young and there’s only so much depth to plumb there.
In Summary:
Animosity gets off to a good start here and I’m definitely pretty intrigued by the possibility here. The bones of the book are certainly familiar with what it is and the whole end of the world side of things so there are a lot of different avenues ahead of it while telling the tale of a girl and her dog. Will it keep to a small cast? Will she end up connecting with a group of survivors as things get worse and humanity is overwhelmed by the animals of the world? Those and other paths can really determine the shape of things with what it will be like and how it’ll flow. Bennett gets things off to a very good start here and de Latorre definitely takes this up a level as he has to handle a lot of variety when it comes to the number of animals. The heart of the book is what will definitely define it the most, however, and there’s a lot to like with what we get from Sandor and Jesse here that sets the tone for the work. Definitely recommend checking this out and I’m already looking forward to seeing this one go for a while.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: August 3rd, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
