Comic Reviews: Stillwater By Zdarsky & Pérez Vol. 1: Rage Rage (Image Comics)

Image Comics releases a story about people living in a strange village where nothing changes their lives in Stillwater on its first volume.

So I’d happen to find something that is coming from the promised land. We get a comic that focuses on a town where every living thing is frozen in time. People can’t age, can’t die, and can’t even produce themselves in health at a matter of time. It’s strange but it seemed to be more to find a way to get immortality for themselves. The story is written by Chip Zdarsky and illustrated by Ramon Perez. Chip, also named Steve Murray is a Canadian comic book artist and writer, journalist, illustrator, and designer who used his related work to create Prison Funnies and Monster Cops, and Sex Criminals with writer Matt Fraction. Steve has illustrated for some clients for CBC, Canadian business, The globe and mail, and the New York magazine. And Ramon is an artist based in Canada who has established his work for over two decades and he actually made numerous nominations and awards for his collaborative works in children’s literature, digital media, and comics, such as the completed comic series of Kukuburi.

The front cover shows a distinctive cover art where the whole background turned into bloody red. The funny thing is that the background shows the town was sprout from its roots, and when you look underground of the town, in the middle of the cover, it shows a human heart that is spreading its roots like having a tree. The woman with the baby in the middle seems to be intimidating enough, the woman turned into a skeleton, but the artist allowed her to have her hair while holding a healthy baby in her arms. It’s weird, but imagine if this cover art would become a CD cover of some metal music or something like the Korn band, but one of the albums is illustrated by Todd McFarlene.

So the story starts when everyone lives in their normal lives, at their workplaces, however, there was one person who is all moody, got fired for assaulting a co-worker which is poor management, and then at night, he went out for a drink with his roommate. Then the next morning, he gets a letter from a strange old man for an invitation to see the town of Stillwater from his distinct relative. It’s crazy, to begin with, but, is there’s actually a town called Stillwater from that world. Some people say that it’s more of an urban legend or a fantasy town. But when they get to Stillwater, the whole town became so eerie as if something strange is going on. The townspeople don’t get a lot of visitors in ages and somehow it began to know that the whole townspeople are acting weird. One of the main characters sees the two kids fighting, and one of them shoves a kid and fell from the building. But when they get to the doctor, the kid just got up and left without any pain. What makes the whole town very bizarre is that the townspeople are immortal. I don’t know where all that came from, but the whole town shared their secrets with the townspeople until the main character knew that his mom is living there, which would make him immortal too. This comic is not much related to any other comics where the whole town is transforming humans to plant monsters or where a small town in Canada where the whole town is crawling with monsters that are hiding from the mountains looking for some boy who returned back home. However, in this comic, we get something more than any kind of weirdness going on, and I get these comics a lot that is related to some towns that have some of the darkest secrets that involve black magic or something told from ghost stories and shit. It’s a curse, a prison and there’s nothing to break this cycle of immortality.

The story is so unreal, to begin with, imagine if you live forever from one century to another century, you’ll get to be bored a lot and you’ll regret that living as an immortal human being would mean that there is nothing else that you can do, living your life forever and not dying is meaningless. But to think that there is a mysterious town where no one ever dies is actually rare and terrifying to know that you’re not an actual mortal anymore. Where is all that logic coming from, does god created such power to build a town and live forever for a century? The art style that the artist developed is something that I can relate to another artist on Instagram. I don’t know the name but there was that post that he drew the portraits of Walter White in his style as his character study, and then when I look back at the comic, the drawing is similar to the characters. The facial expressions of the characters of the comic are mostly accurate coming from people in real life, like a lot. And for that, he’s done a lot of illustrations of the comic from Marvel Comics and Archie Comics, so I barely even see his work beside Kukuburi webcomic. And even so, the graphic violence between people dying and coming back to life is actually intimidating and disturbing, which makes you think that if this a good comic to read about immortality? If you ever want to learn about the bizarre town and people are living from time to time, then this is for you.