Waking up to what you were born for.
Creative Staff:
Story: Christopher Sebela
Art: Hayden Sherman
Colors: Hayden Sherman
What They Say:
Panacea Cryonics offered its customers life after death by keeping their heads frozen until the day technology could rebuild them, free of disease and death. However, as these everyday people from the past are revived, they’re not handed the keys to a new life, but a gun, body armor and an ultimatum. They must fight in a war against unknown opponents for unknown reasons, to secure their place in a brave new world that doesn’t want them around.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When the first information came down about the Cold War series from AfterShock I stopped reading about it after I saw the creative involved. I really didn’t want to go into it knowing anymore than that. While I’ve had mixed on some of Sebela’s past works I really wanted to see what he’d come up with for an original property. But the real hook for me was seeing Hayden Sherman on board with the artwork and coloring. I spent a decent part of 2018 enthralled with his work on John Carter: The End and had high hopes that his next project would be something like this where it’d let his particular style and design work to really shine. And Cold War simply delivers a fantastically strong opening hook that has me excited to see what’s really in store.
The concept is simple enough as we get to follow the story of Tom Rook. A twenty-year military veteran who spent ten years after that as a private contractor, he ended up on the wrong side of the how the government was being accountable for things and that landed him in prison. That was like a smaller scale war for him to fight in there and while it wasn’t what he felt like he was born for it was something that kept him going. Through the narration in this issue we get a really good look at the guy to understand him as a man who feels alive on the battlefield. So seeing how he’s been on ice for over five hundred years and is being thawed out now is the kind of culture shock that could go a whole range of ways. But Sebela upends all of this quickly when the polite protocols revealing what’s happened since the 1990’s is overtaken by the President of the United States to inform this group of thawed out people from the past that they’ve now been drafted for a war and are being thrust into immediate service.
The book focuses on this crazy first skirmish as you’d expect with them thrust out into the field with skintight black costumes, helmets that try to deal with their situations and ease their stress, and a range of really strange opponents that leaves you unsure of what this world is all about. The group that Rook is a part of largely follows his lead as they’re whittled away and it’s intriguing to try and figure out who might survive and how it’ll all unfold with some really nice twists. But what really makes it work is the crazy approach of the situation itself and the little quirks from the computerized side combined with Sherman’s artwork. It’s distinctive in all the right ways as it’s less about personalizing the characters – though that really does come through in striking ways – and more about just making such a strong and engaging design work that you’re drawn into the chaos of it all. It’s moving constantly and the dynamic elements of his character designs are hugely appealing to me, especially with the colors and the angles used to really create a sense of space and scale.
In Summary:
I love this book. I have no idea what’s going on, just like the cast here, and it’s like they took the Gantz manga and made it into a large scale war series. Sebela’s script keeps things moving well and gives us a taste of how people would react to such situations while focusing on Rook to give it a lot of forward momentum instead of just defensive reacting. Hayden Sherman’s artwork is a big star in all of this, not to minimize what Sebela’s working on here, but it’s just so distinctive and exactly the kind of diversity in art style that I want from a publisher like Aftershock and it’s why I keep coming back to check out nearly all of their books. This is definitely a must-read series right out of the gate for me.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: February 14th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
