The world further plunges into controlled chaos.
Creative Staff:
Story: Peter Milligan
Art: Sally Cantirino
Colors: Dearbhla Kelly
Letterer: Andworld
What They Say:
Dax and Bisa love each other. But in this new and terrifying world, love is dangerous. Feeling anything is dangerous. Earth has a new and terrible invader-monsters that deprive us of the very feelings that make us human.
A shocking tale of pent-up emotions, perilously loud sex, and forced composure in the face of unspeakable horror…from one of the most celebrated writers in comics, Peter Milligan (X-Force, Enigma, Shade, the Changing Man, Hellblazer) and breakout horror artist Sally Cantirino (I Walk With Monsters, The Final Girls).
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With Peter Milligan stepping out into a number of new books recently and working with several interesting smaller publishers, his work with Vault Comics definitely fits in well with a lot of what they’ve produced over their existence. Milligan has always tapped into the weird well, going back decades, but it’s the underlying humanity that makes his stories engaging, even one like this that introduces a lot of characters. Joining him on this journey is Sally Cantirino, who has done some really solid recently with I Walk With Monsters also for Vault, so getting a new series from them here just makes my day. It looks great as it covers a ton of locations and characters with a big range of emotions – and non-emotions.
Answers aren’t forthcoming in this issue, nor were they really expected, and the things that are causing all of the problems are barely seen as well. But we do have flashes of the results of their actions as some people are unable to control themselves for a host of reasons. Sometimes its the belief that being indoors means you’re completely safe instead of just safer. And that makes an impact on the public discourse in how we handle each other. Life-form Mania is now being registered as a real issue as some, like Dax, finds himself unable to function because of the panic over the creatures showing at any time. There are so many people falling to the creatures even as the protocols for dealing with it are put into place that you can’t really escape it.
We do get a bit of religious revivalism popping up with a guy named Hays who is basically going the cult leader approach to some degree and that’s likely to factor in later. It plays well to show how various people are coping and the book jumps to a lot of different areas. But it focuses most heavily on Dax and Bisa as their marriage got underway with the event beginning and it’s really messed with Dax. There is probably a childhood trauma in the mix, but he’s unable to deal with interacting with people, and Bisa specifically, as everything feels like it gets elevated emotionally. And sex is completely off the table after a bit because of how “loud” she is, which panics him in that it’ll draw the creatures. You can understand Dax’s panic to be sure, but over the short term. As it progresses and more people settle into a coping routine, he’s unable to and it plays out in a dark and grim way.
In Summary:
Human Remains isn’t providing answers at this point but it is digging more into the psychological pressure that such an event causes. The COVID parallels are easy enough but it also charts its own course so that it’s not completely playing off that event. It’s less focused on character and more of a larger narrative but there are characters we continue to focus on, such as Dax and Bisa and Bisa’s cousin, but it has a bit of a higher-level view of events than a lot of books do which work to really connect you to the characters. It’s quite engaging in the big picture view and really has me intrigued to see where Milligan’s going with it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Vault Comics
Release Date: October 27th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
