“Kill Columbus: Where the Future Comes to Die”
Creative Staff:
Story: Stephen Graham Jones
Art: Davide Gianfelice
Colors: Joana Lafuente
Letterer: Steve Wands
What They Say:
When Indigenous survivors Tad, Sosh, Emily, and Yellow Kid plotted to reverse the apocalypse by stopping the creation of America, their wildest dreams couldn’t have prepared them for the consequences of interfering with history. Now the mission to kill Christopher Columbus comes to a close, but whose blood will spill when the Santa Maria finally hits shore? And where—when—will the desperate time travelers go when their efforts in 1492 backfire? Join New York Times best-selling author Stephen Graham Jones and artist Davide Gianfelice for the heart-stopping finale of the first arc of Earthdivers, and make your predictions about the next era of carnage to come!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a good bit of interest in this when announced and a strong first issue that teased a lot of its potential, Earthdivers is definitely worth spending some time with, though I’ve had some minor struggles with it at times as a monthly. I can totally see this being a much more engaging read in trade form. Stephen Graham Jones definitely has a great hold on the structure of this story here and you can see how it can run for some time and play with some unintended consequences in all directions, all while being really strong with its dialogue and intent. Davide Gianfelice is definitely a highly talented artist and working with Joana Lafuente really elevates everything here as both the time in the past and present are distinct but blend well to create a really detailed and immersive feeling. The character designs are great and I really like the overall feel of the artwork a lot.
The two-track storyline, which does converge a bit at the end, finishes out this run of the series while setting us up for another book later this year. The time in the future where we have the whole school and library thing going on and the utter lack of clarity of what it all means makes it a slog to get through. Some of this comes from the delays that hit early on in the run that this portion of the story never felt like it came together well even though you could see it as the basic piece of just finding out whether the whole thing worked in sending Tad back. But it was convoluted enough in a way that make it hard to crack and enjoy because of the shifting narrative and uncertainty at times as to what was going on. It’s useful here at the end as a kind of narration of the new events of the past as found in one of the books, and setup for what’s next, but it still was a huge weak link in the concept.
With Tad himself, we do see him finally going the distance in his effort to kill Columbus but it’s still one that has him slowly coming to the place in his mind to do so. He knows he should have done it all the way at the start and it would have saved a lot of headaches, but now it’s at a place where he’s being laid out to hang himself and it’s only luck that he survives that and can give pursuit against Columbus and his ship. Things change in the historical side as we get from the other storyline being read but watching some of it play out as Columbus is close to landfall in a different place and we see how Tad is able to finally go all-in on his mission is exhilarating. The fallout from it is only briefly touched upon, something that will likely get a bit more exposition in the next series, but it sets up a pretty grim and dark ending here for both this storyline and the world itself.
In Summary:
With a sequel series coming later this year that shifts to a different time period, I’m admittedly curious about it but at the same time, I’m wary because it felt like this run squandered its premise so much. It didn’t help that the future material wasn’t clear enough to work most of the time, especially with the stretched-out schedule that the run had, making that whole side of it just not work at all. But everything we saw with Tad back in 1492 left you just wanting to throttle him some because of the way he was making everything worse with each new action. I’m still intrigued by the idea but the execution of this series faltered quickly after the second issue and has me wary about an expansion of it in a new era.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: IDW Publishing
Release Date: March 22nd, 2023
MSRP: $3.99
