“Ice Age: Tawny”
Creative Staff:
Story: Stephen Graham Jones
Art: Riccardo Burchielli
Colors: Joana Lafuente
Letterer: Steve Wands
What They Say:
Guest artist Riccardo Burchielli (DMZ) joins Earthdivers, for a side mission to the Ice Age in the first of a four-issue mini-arc exploring America’s pre-Columbian past! When Martin and Tawny’s children disappeared, the couple barreled into the desert to track them down at any cost. Instead, they ran afoul of another group of rovers who claimed to be saving the world by traveling through a cave portal to the year 1492 to prevent the creation of America—an idea that defied belief until the grieving parents were lured into the cave and vanished in time and space. Now alone, Tawny must adapt to the wild marshlands of prehistoric Florida, circa 20,000 BC, and the breathtaking and bloodthirsty megafauna are the least of her problems when she’s caught in a war between a community of native Paleo-Indians and an occupying Solutrean force. Tawny’s odds of survival are in free fall, but she’s a mother on a mission…and she’s holding on to hope that the cave brought her here for a family reunion.
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. Riccardo Burchielli steps in for this issue to do the artwork and with it starting a new storyline that’s not a bad thing. They capture the look of this period well, especially with Lafuente’s color design for all of it, and the rich details and strong layouts make it thoroughly engaging to watch as we see our lead just trying to survive and cope with the situation.
This issue doesn’t do too much to cover what happened in the first storyline and mostly just has us following Tawny at the start as she looks for her kid and ends up in the tunnel in the mountain, suddenly finding herself in the past. She ends up roughly 20,000 BCE – give or take 5,000 years – and spends some of the early time just trying to figure out if she’s having a nightmare or not. Thankfully, Tawny has some basic idea of the history of this period through the narration, which is how much of this opening salvo of the story is told. There are certainly interesting parts in that she talks about how the country is about a hundred miles wider in all directions because of the ice, the mix of creatures that exist in this period, and some of the other elements, such as when she gets caught up in a battle – or rather, a slaughter – as a group that she names the Solutrean are killing the locals. They’re basically people that made their way over from what would now be France in this period, a crossing that happened often over the centuries when it was possible.
What largely follows is how Tawny gets saved in the short term by the locals, her people as it were, but is mostly captured an unable to communicate since she’s unconscious for a lot of it. That changes when they abandon her because of a dangerous animal, but she’s able to deal with that through a bit of luck. It’s a bit much that she skins it and wears it in order to survive, but she’s got the skills and is intent on hunting down the Solutreans for some good old-fashioned revenge. It’s only when she comes across her son that things change, but that’s really just the start of her problems as the locals are now after her and she’s stumbling right into the Solutreans camp as well. It’s one of those bad situation going into a worse situation kind of dynamic but it works well because the narration for her is compelling enough as she grapples with the situation and we get some solid details of the period through her as she’s trying to suss out exactly what’s going on.
In Summary:
The original arc was one that start off strong for me but ended up not working the further along it went, both in the past and present for it. That’s going to take a bit to shake off but this arc is off to a promising start with its focus primarily on Tawny as she’s in full survival mode. It’s a solid journey as she struggles with being in this period while piercing together what she knows of it and the events playing out around her. It’s not too detailed at the moment in terms of story but that’s balanced well by some great artwork that definitely carries the mood and tone, even if it is all pretty bleak and grim at the moment. I’m curious to see if they can move things forward in the bigger sense and what the real intent of this storyline will be since the series opener went quite big in concept.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: IDW Publishing
Release Date: May 17th, 2023
MSRP: $3.99
