Happy New Year, Turn the page, and Welcome to The Clock Issue #1! It’s new from Image/Top Cow.
Writer Matt Hawkins has fastened onto a fascinating science-fiction concept: weaponized disease. Weaponized Cancer!
It’s an uncomfortable topic, of course, makes us squeamish. And more the dramatic potential therein…
Hawkins places us in Nigeria, where experiments are underway on rural Nigerians. Is this revenge for the spammers and scammers who pretend to be Nigerian princes? No, it’s a human genetic experiment, done without a whole lot of permission! The earth’s population is growing rapidly. Fast-acting cancer is racing around the world!
Things get gnarly in a hurry. And the body count keeps ticking higher, all around the clock!
Artist Colleen Doran brings us a visual storytelling technique that zooms out for the big impact scenes and then crops in tight for the closeup. It’s TV, it’s documentary style, it’s magic in a comic. Doran brings us into the midst of the action. Panel rules are broken, people die, things blow up. There is a consistent awareness of black (ink) as a compositional element, and it works. Colour by Bryan Valenza relies heavily on earth tones and blues, as this tale of loss meets Mother Nature gone mad.
Bonus text pages at the end of the issue give us a detailed look into Matt Hawkins’ methodology; his reasoning and research. Solid, I tell ya.
Image/Top Cow, The Clock #1, $3.99 for 24 pages of art, Mature readers
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