The new Generation Gone trade volume 1 from Image takes you on a visceral ride.
The trade, with writing by Ales Kot, art by Andre Lima Araujo (color by Chris O’Halloran), collects the first five issues of this indie title.
It certainly IS a visceral thriller, with three young hackers being pinpointed for a military experiment. Not surprisingly, things kind of go wrong! With scene after scene of bickering and interpersonal drama, this is not your “dream team”. There are also family factors that further complicate the lives of these three new superhumans.
The plot is excellent. Ales Kot has a good sense of where he wants the story to proceed. He sometimes plays it too slow in Generation Gone’s narrative, something I am finding in a lot in comics; a scene that really and truly could take place over a single page in an issue will be elongated, with lots of beats of silence, or little dialogue, accompanied by large panels and splash pages.
The art is hard line with little line variance. A photo at the end of the volume shows us that artist Andre Lima Araujo draws ‘old school’, that is, with pencils, erasers, and markers on paper. There are some really interesting crowd scene panels in the volume, where Araujo is permitted to strut his stuff.
It’s a no-punches gory story of three mixed up kids who become mutants against their will… given powers that many people would only dream of. But the reality of it ain’t no ‘happily ever after’ fable, you get what I’m sayin’??
Image Comics Generation Gone, Volume 1, $17.99 for 172 pages of content. Mature readers
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