A comiXologist recommends…
GOD COUNTRY #1 by Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Jason Wordie, and John J. Hill
The team behind Buzzkill is back with a look at family, loss, age, and cosmic gods brawling. I’m writing of course about the anticipated God Country #1, out just this past Wednesday from Image. In this new jaunt, Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw send some Kirby-esque badasses and a big damn sword down to West Texas and put it in the hands of a man suffering from Alzheimer’s. Also, the sword is 12-feet long and composed of cosmic-space-god-magic so we can assume some wild and outrageous antics will ensue.
Cates opens the story with Roy, the family man, rushing to his father’s farmhouse in West Texas. Roy’s father, Emmett, has been slowly slipping deeper into the later symptoms of Alzheimer’s for some time. Emmett was found wandering the highway far from home and when police attempted to escort him home he broke an officer’s jaw. It is around this point where Roy’s wife and daughter come into Emmett’s farmhouse only to run right back out upon Emmett’s reveal. Emmett is loud, paranoid, doesn’t recognize his family, and is swearing obscenities to high heaven.
Roy’s wife takes their daughter and drives away because she’s at her wits-end with Emmett’s uncontrollable mood swings and worsening condition. It’s about here in the story where a giant storm unlike any Texas had ever seen or will ever see again descends upon the house, with Roy and Emmett inside obliterating it. From the rubble out climbs Roy and a 20-foot tall demon that looks real hungry. For the rest of this one you have to buy the issue! It is issue #1. There is no better time!
Seriously though, I love this concept. Aging Texan and his family confronted with Kirby’s New Gods! That is so cool! I’ve been kind of looking at this one as a point of reference in Kirby’s cultural impact from a very specific position. This is the Texan spin on the New Gods like Jersey Gods a few years back was obviously about New Gods appearing in New Jersey. Each references specific iconographic elements of their region with an effective love and respect that can only come from being from the place in question. This issue is an exceptionally strong opening from an exceptionally strong writer/artist pairing.
If anybody remembers the end of Buzzkill will know that specific tone of grounded self-deprecation amidst the fantastic. A sardonic charm that bleeds through when these two work together is all over this project. It is just wonderful.
Matt Burbridge is a Digital Editor at ComiXology and he’s finishing up Book 3 of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Third one started off kinda real slow, but the tail-end is just carnage, carnage, carnage. :D
New today, the series premiere of GOD COUNTRY by Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Jason Wordie, and John J. Hill
Emmet Quinlan, an old widower rattled by dementia, isn’t just a problem for his children—his violent outbursts are more than the local cops can handle. When a tornado levels his home—as well as the surrounding West Texas town—a restored Quinlan rises from the wreckage. The enchanted sword at the eye of the storm gives him more than a sound mind and body, however. He’s now the only man who can face the otherworldly creatures the sword has drawn down to the Lone Star State…