“The Day We Hit The Coast”
Creative Staff:
Story: Ed Brisson
Art: Damian Couceiro
Colors: Patricio Delpeche
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
Life sucks for Vanessa. Her mother just died and her boyfriend is cheating on her (with her own sister!). To clear her mind, Vanessa is taking the California road-trip that she’s been dreaming about for years. Her postcard-perfect drive through old growth forests quickly turns when THE BREACH hits. A bizarre anomaly in the sky plunges California into a nightmare-world populated with strange, extra-dimensional creatures. Now Vanessa, along with Dougie, an orphaned child, and Kai, a strange, fuzzball of a beast, must fight to survive if they ever hope to make it back home. If there’s even a home to return to.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Beyond the Breach brings us a new series from AfterShock Comics this month and it’s one that introduces me to a trio of creatives I haven’t seen anything from before. Ed Brisson has been around for a bit and he delivers a really solid first issue here that captures the opening moments that lead into terror well. Damian Couceiro’s artwork gives us something that definitely looks good and fits the premise of the book while feeling like it’s really good in terms of creature design and keeping the flow of the story moving smoothly. They’re colored by Patricio Delpeche, who does a really good job here of capturing the mood right and shifting it as necessary as everything goes along, making it a thoroughly engaging book that leaves you disappointed at the end that it ended there.
The book introduces us to Vanessa, a young woman who has just left a really bad relationship in Seattle and has headed to California for a few days to get away and see the sights – particularly the big redwoods. We see this early on as she talks badly about her now-ex that had slept with her sister while she was taking care of her dying mother, and a host of other issues. There’s a great reinvention feeling going on here as she looks to change her life after what happened, cutting the bad away, but it all goes to hell quickly while driving through the main road in the woods as, unbeknownst to her, she has crossed a breach into another version of our world (presumably). And in this one, there are a host of disturbing and ugly creatures that are feasting on the people in the other cars that have all tumbled around from the passage, leaving an array of bodies around.
It’s definitely an engaging start and watching how Vanessa reacts is a whole lot of fun. She’s in a panic but is smart enough to try and grab her phone before getting eaten by one of these creatures. She tries to help another guy that’s being attacked but knows when to cut her losses in order to protect herself. She does go further in helping a kid named Dougie as his father is hauled out of the car to be eaten, but like her phone, nothing electrical is working. This has her on the move with the kid – and a weird local creature she disarmed and took with her as well – to try and find someplace to wait this out so they can figure out what they’re going to do. It’s that early stage where she hasn’t realized there isn’t help in the normal sense out there, the real world isn’t here, and that there’s still too much trust going on.
In Summary:
Beyond the Breach is a very solid opening installment to the larger storyline. There are plenty of questions raised here and no obvious answers but that’s a given. It’s a forward-moving piece that doesn’t stop from the first panel until the last – and even then you’re disappointed that there isn’t more right away. Brisson’s script keeps things hopping but gives us plenty to know about Vanessa, both in action and in her recent past, while Couceiro’s artwork fits perfectly across the board to tell the tale. I’m definitely excited to see if this can maintain both story and intensity as it moves forward and we begin to get reveals as to what everything is truly about.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: July 14th, 2021
MSRP: $4.99
