“We All Deserve To Live”
Creative Staff:
Story: Isaac Mogajane
Art: Santtos
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
As Naledi learns the truth behind Lutho’s shocking abilities, Kaelo starts executing a mysterious plan of her own. But in order to pull it off, she will have to confront the ghosts of her past and strike dark deals with people she swore she would never look upon again. Meanwhile, with her perceived power slowly fading away, Shandu’s witch, Baleka, sets her eyes on Naledi and the magical properties harbored by her various body parts.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The penultimate installment of this series from AfterShock Comics continues to be a welcome one, something that I hope we get more of as time goes on. The series introduced us to something new for the publisher with a creative team that was giving us their vision of Afrofuturism in a really interesting way. This series comes from writer Isaac Mogajane, a South African writer who also co-founded a film production company there. He’s working with artist Santtos who is out of Brazil as they tell the story of Johannesburg in the year 3119. That means a real blending of styles and approaches to storytelling but also background and presentation. The book leans a little hard on word translations at times, which is good and bad depending, but overall it presents an interesting tale that is certainly universal.
With this installment having to cover a fair bit of background before the finale – though we’re hoping there’s a sequel series coming as well – it’s pretty dense in its own way with what it has to get through. Some of the initial material focuses on what’s going on after people have seen Shadu use the power that he was able to channel. That’s raising concerns that he might be authentic and that introduces its own problems, but I rather like that there’s a fairly specific response to it in that if this is the kind of person to be blessed by the gods with power, then it should be ignored. Citing growing up with so many dying around them and all the problems Shadu has caused over the years, it’s easy to see why people wouldn’t line up behind him unless they were true believers or those that simply wanted to be near power.
Where things prove the most interesting here is that we get Lutho relating the tale of her mother to Naledi. With her claim of her mother being tied to the gods and being born of that union, it’s an intriguing tale but a familiar one where her mother was a maiden of the gods in a place where only women were allowed and ended up in a physical relationship with on. That caused a pregnancy that caused her to not just be tossed out but rather killed. Of course, things didn’t go quite as planned as Lutho’s mother survived and gave birth, and it was several years later that Lutho thought her dead when they were discovered. This is what gets Naledi to realize that they may share the same mother and blurts it out just as Shadu’s people have come for her – or her hand, more specifically. It’s a good build-up to things and there are a lot of details to the background story that makes it an engaging read.
In Summary:
With just a bit more to go, it feels like there should be another ten issues to go in order to explore this story and world. I’m interested to see how they’re going to wrap things up and hope that it’s open for more as I want to see it, but either way I really enjoyed this installment. Lutho’s tale of her past is definitely well done and has the right kind of approach and presentation both in the writing and the artwork to make it feel authentic and interesting. It’s a good book with a lot of neat ideas and characters that you want to know more about and seeing Naledi get so close to a new truth that would tell her so much is tantalizing.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: May 25th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99
