Inkspot Fancy

Received from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Reviewing a single issue of a comic book is something I don't usually do because it can be so hard to form an opinion on what is usually just a small part of the story. An issue 1 should have enough to hook the reader, but it will often just introduce the conflicts and characters central to the plot and maybe kick off a big inciting incident. So giving it a star rating can sometimes be equally hard.

But for what it is meant to be - an introduction to this story - I found this book fairly interesting. It's a post-apocalyptic tale of the last human on earth, just living his normal life - making his commute (full of antagonistic mutants and crazed gods), getting to work (where his coworkers prepare unusual greetings for him) and doing his job. That job? Looking for the Life Seed.

To start with, the art in this comic is just gorgeous - which, given that it's got Bernard Chang on it, doesn't surprise me in the least. One of the truly fun things about this first issue, for me, was the look of the thing - the expressive and varied characters, the interesting angles and the way the whole thing has been rendered with a loving tongue-in-cheek style. It's a beautiful book.

The story is a little harder to love though. I feel like this premise is a little all over the place. Despite being a normal human, our hero, King, is a badass among badasses. It's a little off-putting to me when I feel no sense of concern for the welfare of a character. King also has an attitude to match, and while that didn't bother me per se (I like a good jackass with an ego), if you don't like that kind of character, this is REALLY going to rub you the wrong way.

The story had a really strong start, but somehow it felt choppy in the middle of his commute - like there were certain worldbuilding pieces they wanted to fit in before we got down to the business of the plot and they didn't all quite work. It felt a little forced. Things smoothed out once he got to work, but the book is also a little short. I don't know if it's industry standard to run 24 pages, or just a necessity because of advertising, but it feels like this book could really have used the extra few pages to flesh some things out.

Overall, there's nothing super unique about this take on humanity ending the world. The dialogue can be clever, especially with regards to the way the past has been handed down, and I love a lot of the designs of the characters. There's a cliffhanger at the end that's got me curious about the next volume. It's a fun book with some great art, but it's probably not going to work for everyone and will outright irritate some. But if some weirdness is your thing and this description sounds interesting, I'd give it a shot.