A few months after the conclusion of “DMZ,” the first issue of Brian Wood’s newest creator-owned ongoing comes out this week from Dark Horse Comics. “DMZ” was a big hit among the Multiversity Comics writers — will “The Massive” receive the same massive enormous praise?
Written by Brian Wood
Illustrated by Kristian DonaldsonIn a post-war, post-crash, post-disaster, post-everything world, the environmental-action trawler Kapital scours the earth’s oceans for its mysteriously missing sistership, The Massive. Captain Callum Israel, a man who has dedicated his life to the ocean, now must ask himself–as our planet dies–what it means to be an environmentalist after the world’s ended. Callum and his crew will come up against pirates, rebels, murderers, and thieves as they struggle to remain noble toward their cause. Can you save a planet that’s already doomed?
With this first issue, writer Brian Wood manages to do what very few comic writers are able to do in the span of one issue: provide the reader with the basics of both his setting and his plot. Perhaps some writers find the prospect of this intimidating; after all, the world they have created is complicated and expansive. How could any writer fit even a fraction of it into one issue. Wood, however, does not hesitate. Even the most complex settings can, and should, be easily distilled into a simple, one sentence idea, an idea that can then be just as easily be introduced in the span of a few pages. Concrete details are necessary — and Wood does use plenty of dates and other “facts” in his documentary-like flashbacks — but those details are not what the reader absolutely needs to know at the moment. Instead, these supposedly minute details actually help create a bigger, more general picture: that of a broken world. For the first issue, this is all that the reader needs to know, but enough specifics are given that this feels like something new and something complete, even if the reader does not have the whole view just yet. The matter of introducing setting, like most creative matters, is one of balance, and Wood almost perfectly weighs the scales in a way that is neither under-informing or overwhelming.
Like his approach to setting, Wood lets his readers see just enough of what makes his characters tick to get those readers interested. By doing so, each of the three main characters so far get their moments — sure, by the end of this issue Mary may be slightly more fleshed out than Cal and Mag, but enough characterization is provided for both of them that the reader has an idea of who they are, even without reading their stories from “Dark Horse Presents.” Wood knows what is important to address, and, for example, rather than wasting page upon page of pointless melodrama about the morality of killing in a post-everything world, chooses instead to address each characters concerns about the topic in a few sentences or less.
Because Wood devotes just enough, and not too much, time to world-building, he is able to bring the scope in to the here and now. Certainly, it is nice to know what the large-scale conflicts of the series are, whether the twist on the classic situation of man versus nature or Israel’s quest to find his missing ship and men, but this issue also brings us closer to a more pressing concern. Readers are given the then, the now, and the later, in an attempt on Wood’s part to get his audience interested in both what is happening and what will happen. Often times writers will choose one over the other, hoping they make it convincing enough that they can address the other concern later, but Wood has no such reason to worry; if he has readers hooked on the now, he simultaneously has a hold on them for the long haul.
Kristian Donaldson has illustrated his fair share of great looking comics, but, if this first issue is any indication, “The Massive” might be his best work yet. Donaldson has always had an eye for detail, but the line work we see in this issue is some of his cleanest and most complex yet. The photo-realism of the flashback scenes causes them to resonate within the mind of the reader — they look like they could very well be in tomorrow’s newspaper, which certainly helps carry what Wood is trying to say to his and Donaldson’s audience. Like the mangaka of Japan, though, Donaldson does not fully translate this approach to his portrayal of people; while his figures certainly are finely detailed, it is not in the same, quasi-realistic style. This is for the better, though, because these people are characters, not objects, and a slightly more stylized approach allows them to not only move, but breathe. Colorist Dave Stewart brings the finishing touches to the art. As always, Stewart not only plays to the strengths of the artist he is working with in general, but enhances how that artist complements the strengths of the writer. In the end, we are presented with an incredibly cohesive comic, one that seems almost like it was put together by a single, incredibly talented consciousness.
The first issue for “The Massive” joins “Saga” in setting the bar for debut issues to come. Wood, Donaldson, Stewart, and “DMZ” letterer Jared k. Fletcher have come together to form one of the most promising creative teams currently working together and to create an equally promising comic, with informative and engaging back-matter to boot. Comics like this and “Mind MGMT” make it clear the Dark Horse is set on winning back its creator-owned crown from Image, but so long as the competition means more comics as good as “The Massive” are on the way, we readers are the real winners.
Final Verdict: 9.2 – Buy it!
