David Hine (1) (1956–)

Two fugitives, a disfigured man and a woman who turns out to be some kind of ancient Babylonian sex demon, take refuge in a benighted English village whose sole employer is an industrial insect-breeding facility.

This lives up to its subtitle "a tale of rural unease" with a hotchpotchy mix of witchcraft (black and white), pea-souper fogs, inbred yokels and other normal rural stuff. There's feminism, class struggle, and the military-industrial complex thrown in for good measure. The art is good at atmospherics but the people are drawn with a hint of manga which felt off to me. It's really too short a book to contain so many characters and such an elaborate plot and back-story. We never find out exactly what the duo are on the run from, for example, and it all feels kind of rushed.

My wife has been to the real Liphook, in Hampshire. She didn't mention witches or an insect factory but there may have been fog and yokels.… (more)

DNF 53%

The artwork drew me in and the potential of the worldbuilding had me intrigued, but, oofa duffa, this baby's first time playing with tropes and no Dinotopia-esque aesthetics can save this writing.

You've got your 'good' human colonists from another planet who have a matriarch and are cool with the indigenous people. You've got the 'bad' human colonists from a different planet who have an entirely racist war culture and are not cool with the native people. The main dudes, despite the 'goodies' having a matriarch, it's still a dude that is their representative, have teenage kids who are uniquely different and rebellious to anyone else in their entire cultures. You've got the indigenous people who have classic 'tribal' coding and look like a mix of D&D's Slaad and Warhammer's Lizardmen, who have the 'noble savage' thing going on. They are also keeping a big secret of ancient technology and dangerous knowledge, being charged with keeping this from the colonists, killing them of they find out.

Tensions reach a head between the colonist groups who are ready to go to war, but an act of light eco-terrorism from the 'goodies' causes massive damage revealing the secret ruins and the Romeo and Juliette teens end up bungling through a portal with one of the indigenous guys who just couldn't bring themselves to murder their friend. They are now stuck in the dangerous, uncharted South, while their parents have to settle their differences to try and find them, while the indigenous leader plans to kill everyone because secrets.

This is the setup of the first few issues and it's just bad and lazy and boring and offensive.

There is some interesting looking tech, animals, and monsters with some hinted at potentially interesting lore and abilities of the titanic psychic monstsrs that might be gods? But it's too little under this embarrassing paint by numbers narrative.

The fact that this was published by Image in 2020 is fucking mind-boggling and embarrassing. Seriously, I would absolutely believe this was written by Chat GPT with the prompt: 'Comic based on Dinotopia, Stargate and Avatar (the blue one) set in Pandora with bigger monsters'.

The art is great, but it really isn't enough to save this powerfully mediocre and derivative nonsense.… (more)