A comiXologist Recommends (a lot)
Writer – Rick Remender
Artist – Jonathan Wayshak
This first issue is a lot. Devolution #1 by Remender and Wayshak is all of the fun and appropriate exposition needed for a post-apocalyptic book’s hook. And I’m not one for this particular subgenre of speculative fiction (Post-Apocalyptic), but this book does a few things other titles of the same milieu are lacking. The most important example of this is the cause of the world’s collapse. The entire world has reverted back to the prehistoric era and reclaimed the world for the Neanderthals.
Devolution #1 begins some time after the collapse of the world. A few years have passed since the fall, when we join our main character Raja on a quest to secure a cure to the contagious DVO-8 plague. The DVO-8 chemical strain was designed by an international coalition of scientists to eliminate the center of the brain that craved war. When launched into the atmosphere the DVO-8 turned out to be virulent (because of course it did) and consumed the planet. Every species of life on the planet reverted back to a state more akin to its pre-historic ancestor.
We join Raja digging through an empty gas station in Nevada for a road atlas. She needs to better acquaint herself with the area, but not long after she finishes her inner monologue about not bathing (as a safety measure) is she accosted by a war party of cavemen! The violence that ensues is pure and nasty and perfect! After this first initiation we meet other survivors and things pick up right before it is too late and—issue #1 is already finished?
Issue #1 is just chock-a-block with so many goodies. I wasn’t even able to tell you my favorite part because it was too near the end.
Wayshak’s art is just delightful in all its over-the-top energy and humor. He draws equal parts sexy and goofy all rolled into a glorious, visually violent satire. And let us talk about a Mr. Rick Remender. I’m sorry, THE Mr. Rick Remender. The man who made me love Venom for wholly new reasons, brought X-Force back with a vengeance, and created my current favorite Science Fiction series “Black Science,” has brought a post-apocalyptic book for even my refined (pretentious) tastes.
With people being (awful) people, vicious pre-historic beasts maiming everything, and the drama ruminating in light satire, I hope this series is going on for a good long time. Raja is on her quest to find a cure, and for the readers’ sakes, I hope she doesn’t find it anytime soon.
Matthew Burbridge is a Digital Editor at comiXology. He spends his spare time doodling in sketchbooks and reading Star Wars novels. The old Expanded Universe and the new one, because frankly it is just “more of the SWar.”
Mystical martial arts mayhem (aka the best kind) from Rick Remender and Sean Murphy in Tokyo Ghost #4, new today!
Tokyo Ghost #1
The Isles of Los Angeles 2089: Humanity is addicted to technology, a population of unemployed leisure seekers blissfully distracted from toxic contamination, who borrow, steal, and kill to buy their next digital fix. Getting a virtual buzz is the only thing left to live for. It’s the biggest industry, the only industry, the drug everyone needs, and gangsters run it all. And who do these gangsters turn to when they need their rule enforced? Constables Led Dent and Debbie Decay. This duo is about to be given a job that will force them out of the familiar squalor of Los Angeles to take down the last tech-less country on Earth: The Garden Nation of Tokyo.
Bestselling writer RICK REMENDER (BLACK SCIENCE, DEADLY CLASS) and superstar art team SEAN MURPHY (CHRONONAUTS, Punk Rock Jesus) and MATT HOLLINGSWORTH (WYTCHES, Hawkeye) examine our growing addiction to technology while thirsting for a nature we continue to destroy.
In the far distant future, the sun’s premature expansion has irradiated Earth, sending humanity to the lowest depths of the seas, hidden within radiation-shielded cities, while probes scour the universe for inhabitable worlds to relocate to. After tens of thousands of years, a single probe returns, crashing on Earth’s surface, a now-alien place no human has seen for many millennia.
You can get the first four issues of LOW, written by our #creatoroftheweek Rick Remender, for 50% off when you use the code IMAGE in your cart before checkout!
Get Black Heart Billy, a graphic novel by #creatoroftheweek Rick Remender, for just $4 when you use the code BILLY in your cart before checkout!
Meet Billy Black, an 80s hardcore scene refugee who’s having a bit of trouble acclimating to modern life. While bludgeoning a band of Burning Man refugees with the skull of Jerry Garcia, Billy inadvertently becomes immersed in an evil Nazi conspiracy to turn the world into mindless hippie zombies in order to usher in the 4th Reich. “Hitler in Jerry Garcia’s corpse how can you say no?”– Warren Ellis
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