The panic of being a parent opens a whole pandora of problems.
Creative Staff:
Story: Adam Glass
Art: Dennis Calero
Colors: Adriano Agusto
Letterer: Corey Breen
What They Say:
Think about your “life” for a moment…the people you’ve known, the one’s you’ve loved, and all the stuff in between. Now imagine you learned that everything YOU believed, everything YOU lived, everything YOU felt actually never happened…it was ALL not real. But it is REAL to YOU and you now must fight to save it and everyone you love. But to do that, you first have to save the world. Welcome to “The Normals.” an exciting new rush-of-blood-to-the-head series and AfterShock Comics.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
AfterShock continues to produce some pretty interesting and varied books to the point where I do my best to not know too much about them until they hit, allowing some mystery and surprise to take shape. Adam Glass has been putting out some fun and interesting books the last few years and I was definitely keen to see what he had in store with something called The Normals. For this property he’s paired with artist Dennis Calero, who has to bring the real world into play while shading it with an edge of darkness, and colorist Adriano Agusto, who takes all of that and accentuates it beautifully with bright and colorful moments and then the creeping darkness itself. THe team has come together very well for this opening installment to be sure.
The book focuses on a fairly normal (duh) family living in suburbia where we get the parents, Jack and Mary, and the two kids, the older daughter Josephine and the younger son Aidan. The normality of them isn’t overstated in a comical way as we have Jack narrating about how he was listless for years and smoked pot until his thirties, but we also know through his narration that he and Mary have been together since being teenagers and their daughter was born just after college. They’re a solid family navigating the modern world where he’s feeling a bit out of place, Josephine handles it all very well with the fluidity of life and technology, while concern is toward Aidan as he hasn’t grown much in the last two years, which comes after dealing with the discovery of his being dyslexic. Familiar problems that are well handled but make an impact on their bond, even if the kids are basically somewhat distant teenagers.
What throws everything into chaos is when Aidan falls from the treehouse and Jack sees what he thinks is a live wire sticking out of his head after the fall. That disappears but it later leads to the discovery of a symbol under his skin that sends the parents into a panic, wanting to head back to their hometown to recollect and figure things out. This is where it turns more Twilight Zone as nobody there knows them, there are no records of them, and their panic begins to grow significantly. While we do get answers here, more than one might expect for an opening issue, it’s the tension and uncertainty that captures my attention with this in how everyone reacts and copes with it. It all opens up to some potential for discovery, chaos, and perhaps even a little bit of evil plans in the mix, but what we get here is that surreal moment where you discover that everything you know isn’t true and the kind of fear that it can put into you.
In Summary:
The opening installment spends the necessary time to connect us with this family while (if you’re like me) not knowing what the intent will be, the what will go wrong element. Glass puts together a familiar family that you could see on any drama or sitcom and work from there and that’s part of the appeal as you wait to see what will go disastrously wrong. It definitely has that Twilight Zone feeling in all the right ways and the connection with the characters is critical, which is very well done here even if all the focus in the moment is on Jack. Combine all of that with some very strong artwork from Calero and color work from Agusto and the end result is a book that delivers on the slow creepiness and darkness coming into their lives. It paints a familiar “normal” modern family in America and begins to peel away the layers, making you want more.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: May 24th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
