“Amulet”
Creative Staff:
Story: Inaki Miranda & Roy Miranda
Art: Inaki Miranda
Colors: Eva De La Cruz
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
We are back into the hopeful, apocalyptic world of Tala and Hototo.
Year 2090. Six years have passed since Salvation Day, when Palladions, with their majestic powers, emerged as the protectors of humanity, saving the five remaining Megalopolis and securing the future of the human species.
But nothing stays and the horizon always brings a new storm.
These are dark times. Death, famine and desperation lurk around the streets of Megalopolis 9. The shield has lost thirty percent of its reach. The New Nature has learned to create cuts in the energy channels that power the Beacon and the Palladions. A never-ending horde of beasts siege the remains of the city, increasing the desperation among the population.
The responsibility of keeping the city afloat lies on the shoulders of Generals Nesbo and Terrassa, who have to resort to risky survival measures. The reconnection missions are the only thing that is keeping the population secure…but nothing seems enough.
Powerlessness corners the Palladions, who fear not being able to protect the city.
Everything is black, except for the white snow that covers with silence the dying, black present.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having really enjoyed the We Live series from this team that kicked off in late 2020 and ran for five issues, I’ve definitely been curious about this incarnation of it. It’s one that moves things forward so there is plenty of room to explore the in-between but that disconnect is one that really looms large here. Inaki and Roy Miranda definitely have things planned out here and I know there’s a big design around a lot of this so I’m more than willing to give it some time to shake out and find its footing. Inaki Miranda’s artwork continues to be really fantastic with some great dynamic designs and layouts that really gives it a neat flow and some really well-done character designs that feel distinctive. It helps that Eva De La Cruz returned with this as the color design really brings in something special with it layering and shading. It’s ideal with Miranda’s style.
The opening for this is awkward in general because we get two launch issues with this one, white, and another one with Black. I read Black first and I kind of get the impression we were supposed to read White first, but hey, that’s what happens when you release two first issues at once. This one is very much the same as what we saw in our other review in terms of design, artwork, and approach, but it does read far better and more relaxed overall. This issue does some better worldbuilding and connecting us with some of the characters as we see how Megalopolis 9 is struggling under the new Mother Cenotes that are attacking. These creatures are attacking differently and more accurately, cutting the connections to the energy source that powers the shield to the city and helps to give the Palladions their abilities. That has the size of the city shrinking as the shield is covering less and less of it and we get a lot of Palladions that are becoming weaker themselves without the full charges they used to get.
That said, it’s still hard to get a handle on what feels like a large cast of characters. It does do some narrow material focusing on Tala and Hototo as he’s struggling with everything and trying to be the one true hero and she’s just seeing loss everywhere and is trying to cope. We get some time with the administrative side that’s trying to get help from other cities as well. But we also get to see an encounter with a group on the outside using some protective barriers to hide from the Mother Cenotes and how it goes deadly wrong for one of them while also seeing the shield retract on a street where people were still living, and how the local guard try to protect them. It’s busy and crazy in all the right ways to capture the look and feel of an invasion and attack by the Mother Cenotes and it’s just haunting with how much of the city was already devastated.
In Summary:
While I struggled with the Black issue, this White issue worked a whole lot better for me. It felt more accessible even while not picking up from where the previous series left off. It spends more time on the worldbuilding but in a way that felt a lot more accessible and interesting. The Mother Cenotes look a lot more threatening here and just getting to humanize both Tala and Hototo more here in the years since we last saw them goes a long way for me. I’m definitely more interested than I was with the Black issue, but this is a long-game kind of series to begin with so I’m in for quite a while.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: March 9th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99
