It all starts with a falling-down brick building on the cover… What’s The Furthest Place From Here? #1, from Image. It is a yellow brick road tale, the furthest place you could go from traditional narrative.
WTFPFH begins in a record shop bathroom, where one of the young plaid-shirted characters has had a tooth fall out. We presume it’s from sickness. The record shop, it turns out, is off-limits, curfewed. But plenty of street kids are walking around inside, checking out the selection. It’s a secret gathering of vinyl record fans. Unfortunately, the underground gathering is interrupted by a loud pounding on the door! Stranger danger!!
Written by Tyler Boss, and illustrated by Matthew Rosenberg, (Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou is excellent on lettering), with colour assist by Clare DeZutti, this is a story of collective survival in times of post-apocalyptic America. Gangs have turf, and ‘turf’ each other out of their territory. Skirmishes, struggles, arguments, and killings. That’s the violent stuff this neighbourhood is made of!
The narrative is elongated, stretched, and manipulated. Moments take pages, interrupted by full-page chapter headings and vivid double-page spreads. It has a languid feel because of this; Ross and Rosenberg take all the time in the world to show us the score. It’s a long-playing comic. The drawings are really interesting; heavy blacks, a nice mix of large and small panel page grids, plenty of well-executed scenes. The colour is excellent; by turns pale and pallid, with interruptions of reds and blues.
Perhaps the thing to do is to play the recommended playlist that accompanies the comic; timing the chapter dividers as gaps between the songs…hmmm. But for sure, this comic is prolonged and the timing and pacing is stubbornly independent, just like the characters who are in this drama for the long run.
Image Comics, What’s The Furthest Place From Here? #1, $4.99 for 57 pages of comic story plus extras. Teen+
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