Sometimes it doesn’t just feel like the world is ending, it really is ending. At least for humanity and much of the environment.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Wood
Artists: Kristian Donaldson, Garry Brown, Dave Stewart
What They Say:
In this first volume of Brian Wood’s new, sprawling post apocalyptic epic, follow the crew of the Kapital from the flooded remnants of Hong Kong to Unalaska, with stops in Antarctica and Mogadishu, as post-Crash ethics and economics are explored across a broken world. Collecting issues #1–#6 of the series, plus three eight page stories from Dark Horse Presents.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having enjoyed a few of Brian Wood’s works over the last couple of years, I was definitely interested in what he was doing with The Massive. It’s the kind of series that feels like an ideal match for Dark Horse Comics with its real world storyline taken to the next level, but I was a bit ambivalent about starting it since it has a fairly set run that’s supposed to go around thirty issues and a total of five trades. With the addictive nature of a good storyline, I’m not one to really want to spend a lot of time waiting around for more since I have to cover so much. But after polishing off a few other books and with the debut of the second volume, I couldn’t help but to bring myself to checking it out. And it’s definitely worth it, though the frustration issue is most definitely going to be there because I do very much want more. Now.
The structure of the series is one that will definitely appeal to a certain segment of readers as it provides the main storyline that runs through with the cast, but it also provides plenty of narration boxes in each issue that fleshes out the world as a whole. Those may not seem like they connect fully to the moment at hand, and they don’t always in certain ways, but they help to raise awareness of different issues going on in this far too realistic and scary premise. Taking place in a world that’s near where we are today, events have played out differently. While the signs started in the late 90’s with what was going to happen, the early part of the 2000’s went in a whole other area as an event called The Crash happened. It’s not one specific thing, but a number of events that are interconnected that threw the world into chaos. With a global ecological disaster that has impacted so many places, submerged lands and caused widespread changes in every nation, that pushed the financial crash and a societal crash as well. Over the course of the first six issues, we get a range of these impacts, largely as side stories amid other events for the two main arcs that take place here, but it all serves to paint a singular picture.
The world is screwed.
It’s this part of the story that definitely makes an impact, if you’re open to it, to see how so many different things have changed because of the variety of the disasters that have happened. It’s a well layered and intriguing piece as Wood hits so many different areas of how the world would change as the sea levels rise, scarcity sets in, panics and other issues crop up. It’s not a whole worldview we get here because it does come from a specific set of characters and their travels, but it touches on so much and in such detail at times that it can leave you breathless just in a description of an event. But more importantly, at least for me, it’s a hugely oppressive kind of foundational piece of the story because it paints such a bleak and saddening picture of something that should have been preventable. And that, for me, gets under my skin and just makes me all the more uncomfortable in reading the story even while being drawn in all the more.
All of this foundational material is hugely important, but you also need a compelling cast to pull it off, which is done here as we follow the crew of the Kapital, a good sized ship that is part of the Ninth Wave group of ecological based ships that look to save the world (not necessarily people) from being harmed further. We get a lot of different flashbacks over the book showing some of the early missions and how the captain of the ship, Callum Israel, became a part of this movement after being a mercenary for a PMC for so long. His switch to trying to doing something positive works well, but he makes this choice just as the world is starting to go to hell. And he does it in a brash way, which earns him some real supporters worldwide early on because he was taking the fight out there rather than just talking, but it also earned him a lot of enemies. But he also did it with a twist in that was done all with a non-violent approach since he wanted to back away from how he lived as a private military contractor.
While the series focuses on the ship Kapital, it’s named after the other and larger ship that was part of his group called The Massive. This ship went missing and Callum and his crew are spending their time looking for it out in the open Pacific, all while facing the continually changing world. With fuel becoming tighter, fresh water and food harder to find and a severe increase in piracy because of it, it’s a dangerous world. And through their search, we get to see a few different ports and places, including how much of Hong Kong has been submerged and how the people are dealing with it, but also some of how the piracy works out there as they get caught up in a bad situation. It’s a wonderfully layered story in that it shows a long period of time through the present day pieces and the various flashbacks as it covers the nature of what Callum has done to ensure they have some resources. Something that definitely makes sense considering his background. But it also has the reality of how stark survival can be in this world even while being as prepared as you can be.
Because of the nature of the book, I’ll admit I found it difficult to connect with the cast as it starts revealing itself, but by the time you get to the end of the sixth issue and then into the three short stories that actually came out beforehand, you can get a good handle on their personalities, some of their pasts and why they’re all working together. I can’t say that I’m actively a fan of any of them, but it’s very engrossing watching them deal with several different situations, some dangerous and some life threatening, while also just trying to survive in a world where you have to feel like it’s all coming to an end. That kind of character storytelling is done very well here and is ably enhanced by the artwork, first by Kristian Donaldson through the first arc and then Garry Brown in the second. The style of it goes for a mostly real world approach, but combined with the color choices by Dave Stewart and the atmosphere that he brings to the penciling, it makes this a fully lived in and realized world that most definitely adds to the oppressive and depressing nature of it all.
In Summary:
Reading The Massive, it’s a book where you can definitely enjoy it and love it for what it does, especially on a technical level, but I came away from it feeling quite depressed and needed to take some time to think about it for a few days before even being able to approach it again. For me, that’s a sign of A Very Good Book since it gets you think and truly feel something. It has a really solid story that’s very much character driven but with a larger theme about the missing ship that’s always in the back of your mind that leaves you wondering what happened, where has it been and what mysteries it may reveal if it ever resurfaces. But until that time, we’re provided with an intriguing crew of characters that Brian Wood and the talented artists he’s working with to take us through a scary and far too realistic world. I’m up for the journey, but I’m definitely afraid of it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 19th, 2013
MSRP: $19.99
