Before you wonder, Atlantis Wasn’t Built For Tourists (“AWBT” for short) isn’t about the singer Donovan, the Submariner, or Aquaman. It’s above ground, a small town in a small county in Oregon.

Writer/ creator Eric Palicki (No Angel, Fake Empire, etc) tosses us in by the side of the road, at night, where a drunk driver nearly kills a backpacker. And we never look back. The swerves and ditches and detours of AWBT are inventive and unexpected. Sudden shifts in volocity, and horror by the bushel.

Palicki takes perhaps a standard tale of a stranger passing through a strange little town and imbues it with horror and suspense. Who IS this traveler? What is he doing, lurking around in the dark, supposedly backpacking his way across the States from Ohio? You’ll just have to check it out for yourself to find out…

Artist Wendell Cavalcanti (Brazilian, The Phantom, etc), seals the darkness and sudden violence. His characters are just life-like enough to have us lulled into a reader’s trance, but there is more than meets the eye. The artwork style is somewhere ‘post-Gene Colan’ and a bit reminiscent of 1970’s DC Horror titles: plenty of darkness, spooky surroundings, and cross-hatching.

Colourist Mark Dale (The Pride season 2, Gwar Orgasmageddon, etc) keeps things somber and simple, but that’s in the book’s favour: we want to follow the trail, the Police Station in its grey and concrete, the local folk in their totally obsessed visitor welcomes.

Read issue one, and you’ll want more!

Scout Comics, Atlantis Wasn’t Built For Tourists #1, $3.99 for 24 pages of content. Mature

By Alan Spinney

After a career of graphic design, art direction and copywriting, I still have a passion for words and pictures. I love it when a comic book comes together; the story is tight, and the drawings lead me forward. Art with words... the toughest storytelling technique to get right. Was this comic book worth your money? Let's see!!