A cover up sets the path to an exploration below Manhattan!
Creative Staff:
Story: Zack Kaplan
Art: Alvaro Sarraseca
Colors: Chris Blythe
Letterer: Troy Peteri
What They Say:
Lost cities aren’t just the stuff of myths. They exist hidden right under our noses. But when a mysterious expedition is disrupted by supernatural activity, and an antiquities professor goes missing, his teenage daughter and her friends must become underground urban explorers, follow his tracks on a coming-of-age journey through subterranean tunnels, and ultimately find the holy grail of lost city: Atlantis buried right under New York City!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the things that I enjoyed about AfterShock is that while they do get some pretty well-known talent to work for them there’s also a number that aren’t on my radar. This new series comes from writer Zack Kaplan and with two other comic series under his belt that I can find he’s coming in without a lot to judge on, forcing me to look solely at this work. He does get a good leg up on things here thanks to the always excellent Alvaro Sarraseca whose done a lot of stuff on some Gold Key material in the last year or two that just delighted me. Seeing him work in this different kind of environment only increases my interest in his work as there’s a lot to love with character designs, settings, and just the flow of it all with a couple of double page spreads that are very strong.
As opening issues go, Lost City Explorers doesn’t exactly go burning out of the gate here with something huge. We get a really good opening sequence showing a group of researchers under Manhattan that have discovered a doorway that they can open using music as the key. The doorway is underwater and they’re using a drone to work through their first explorations of it so we don’t get a lot in terms of names and story but the setup is good so that when it all goes wrong, one of them being pulled into the water and disappearing and then some kind of water being showing up looking all intimidating, it works really well to create the right sense of panic. And it feeds into the fallout side as well as the issue goes on, taking us to the children of the man who disappeared.
The main focus is on Helen, who likes to be called Hel, and she’s like a lot of kids that are finishing up high school without having a real focus. With her father being interested in ancient civilization research and never around, she’s in an amusing place with what she wants out of life (no deadlines, no bosses, no college so she doesn’t have to deal with stupid drunken frat boys or debt) and uncertain about what to do next. The news of her father’s death sets off the spiral, however, that shows us some of the friend circle dynamics and that of her brother and his girlfriend, as the death is explained as a gas accident with a hefty settlement. But one of those that survived reveals to her in secret that he may not be dead and she needs the research to figure out how to find him, which of course has Helen wanting to know a lot more and to be more involved, even with all her father issues.
In Summary:
With the teases of hunting for the lost city of Atlantis and it being buried deep below New York City, there’s obviously a lot of easy interest in this kind of crazy bit of fun. Kaplan presents it in a good way here with a solid hook and potential gateway twist that has me curious to see where it goes. I also like that it’s a pretty dialogue/character heavy piece instead of the usual big action set piece kind of thing, giving us a chance to know those who are about to go exploring. Alvaro Sarraseca’s artwork is really great here as we get some strong character designs that feel varied and realistic in all the right ways, leaving me wanting to get to know them all the more and seeing how they’re going to face the challenges ahead. This isn’t a barn burner of an opening but it’s one that does a lot of good stuff to draw you in with the characters and ideas even with a general kind of familiarity to it all.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: June 20th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
