Boy is it a good year to be one of the “crazies” who think we are destroying our planet and that we are soon going to be living on a planet no longer equipped to nourish us. I mean, yeah, that’s all awful, but at least we are getting good comics from creators with similar fears, right?
Written by Joe Harris
Illustrated by MartÃn Morazzo“TRASHED!”, Part One
Chas Worthington dreams of big things, solving bigger problems, and making his mark on the world. Only no one takes the twenty-one year-old heir to one of the biggest oil fortunes in history very seriously. That is, until he turns his back on his cushy life of wealth and prestige, and seeks to solve an environmental disaster twice the size of his native Texas known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The epic sci-fi adventure and survival tale begins!
As a new comic book with environmentalist themes, “Great Pacific” will probably be unfairly compared to Brian Wood’s latest creator-owned ongoing series, “The Massive.” This new series by Joe Harris and MartÃn Morazzo has a completely different goal in mind; while “The Massive” posits that the environmental apocalypse is nigh, and that we need to prepare for living in a world where the very earth is trying its best to become inhabitable, “Great Pacific” seems a bit more optimistic. Sure, the rest of the world seems content to let our planet go to hell, and some entities’ futures rely on making that dismal future a reality, but perhaps it only takes one person with enough vision and drive to avert the crisis we are heading toward. While Harris’s vision of the near-future is far from cheery, it is still refreshing compared to the “all hope is lost no matter what we do oh god we’re going to die” mentality that is in vogue these days. The limits on this optimism do sometimes come off as a bit arbitrary, though; for example, when our main character, Chas, displays his latest invention, it is hard to believe he would be completely blown off when it didn’t quite work. Perhaps there have been multiple similar demonstrations in Chas’s past that had the same result, but nothing really suggests that. Instead, we get that even though the kid may be onto something, his higher-ups are so interested in making money that they aren’t interested in entirely reinventing the laws of physics… which, okay, may be true, but sometimes it takes removing things from reality to actually make them more “believable.”
Structurally, this is a sound first issue. First and foremost, Harris deserves praise for using his 32 pages well. Harris avoids many of the typical problems encountered in a debut issue, carefully balancing the three-fold challenge of giving the reader enough information, letting the characters breathe, and making sure something actually happens. We get that Chas is the wealthy heir of an oil company who is interested in environmental concerns — as for now, we don’t know too much about Worthington Energy and that’s just fine. Too many writers get too obsessed with the setting they are creating and drown readers what is ultimately not important, resulting in a story that is a bore to read. Because Harris realizes what is and what is not important for this first issue, we actually have time to meet and learn about Chas, something that is usually reserved for second issues in other series. The issue also features a great scene that is a true “didn’t see that coming moment” — though it is obvious things wouldn’t turn out exactly as originally portrayed — and which also helps reinforce one of the series’s prevalent ideas: the concept of fighting fire with fire. There may be a few moments where the dialogue is a bit stiff and clearly serving the purposes of exposition, but when Harris gets that out of the way, you can tell that his characters are speaking from the heart. On the whole, this is a well-written book that shows a lot of room for growth once the beginning formalities are out of the way.
MartÃn Morazzo has a whole lot of potentials and his art is almost, but not quite, to the point of being fantastic. Morazzo is particularly excellent at scenery, finding that perfect sense of balance regarding the finer details. More impressive still are his layouts; sure, he might not stretch the boundaries of Euclidean geometry with his panel placement and shapes, but [brilliant] artists such a J.H. Williams III seem to have made some comic fans forget that the real deciding factor of what makes a great layout is what is inside the panel, and how it leads into what follows. Considering this, Morazzo is a top-tier comics artist, never content to redraw the same panel in order to meet deadlines or simply lighten his load. The one problem, though, are his actual figures. Half the time, Morazzo is completely on point, with characters that move and breathe easily, but at other points the characters seem so very flat — and often at the worst times. This isn’t something that is the result of any stylistic choice, so it stands to reason that this is something that Morazzo can “fix” — and let’s hope he does, because if he remedies this ailment, he’ll quickly be on his way to becoming an all-time great.
While it doesn’t start off with the proverbial bang, this first issue of “Great Pacific” promises an interesting and smart new series. While it is not without its faults, it is a strong first issue that uses the amount of pages it contains to get the ball rolling smoothly. For this alone, Harris and Morazzo deserve praise — the fact that it is off to an intriguing start sweetens the deal.
Final Verdict: – 7.8
