In a One-Shot issue, Image brings forth Nocterra: Nemesis Special. It’s an especially dark way to cast shadow on your summer lawn, its long spindly digits scraping across your brain and entering your reading experience.
The story of Nocterra takes place ten years in the future. It’s just after the world has been plunged into an everlasting night. Sort of like the middle of winter up north, but like, all the time, and all that, even down south. You get the drift. And so anyway, if you want to make it through the day, so to speak, you better hang around artificial light to keep the dark bad things away. This one-shot swerves off the regular Nocterra tarmac and gives us bumps and shakes on its brief detour.
Writers Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel portray, to put it simply, a two-universe trek: Emory is trying to drive a transport truck to get two other people to safety, all the while being mentally tormented by a truly evil presence. This presence, “Bill”, is everywhere in Emory’s mind. Probing, ranting, trying to screw up the ride. And all Emory can do is attempt to mentally block Bill from knowing Emory’s destination. The dialogue is terse and smack full of Jolt Cola and heavily caffeinated.
Artist Liam Sharp (line art and colour), with AndWorld Design on letters, pulls out all the stops, buckling the reader into the passenger seat for this road rage ride through hell. It’s a spectacular experience, a visual roller coaster ride on acid, a darkly bad trip through an especially persistent nightmare. There is really effective teamwork here, with lettering and art playing off each other. Brightly coloured orange highlights silhouetted against ribbons of nucleic nastiness. The panel borders get jagged, get white, and jiggy with irritation, popping out of the darkness. The story is pedal to the metal, highly intense.
It’s a highly entertaining issue, this one, with Emory and the others battling Bill, and a really dramatic lead-in to issue 16’s conclusion. Image, Nocterra: Nemesis Special. $3.99 One-shot, 23 pages of content.
Newsdesk