God Country #1
GOD COUNTRY #1
Writer: Donny Cates
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Color: Jason Wordie
Letters and Design: John J. Hill
Publisher: Image
When a comic starts its first issue with a Cormac McCarthy quote there’s two equally likely scenarios. The first of which is, unfortunately, that comic is full of mismatched and uneven darkness, faux-grit, and some on-the-nose message about humankind’s inherent evil. The second of which, however, is that the comic pages that lay before you are a goddamn delightful sucker punch.
Thankfully, and wholly from cover to final page, God Country #1 is the second.
Donny Cates, who helmed one of my favorite comics of 2015, Dark Horse’s The Ghost Fleet, continues his incredible comics-writing streak here with a cosmologically delightful and dreadful debut issue. The first couple of pages might be disheartening to readers, the kind of family-heartache fodder that you may feel is too pedestrain for you, or too trodden to still be interseting. I implore you, please, keep going because the story that Cates sets up is so much more than that.
A gritty, rural Texas based, story of demons, gods, men, and…swords.
Awash in a rough mix of dirty and emotive lines from Shaw and a muted watercolor-esque palette from Wordie, we are introduced to Emmett Quinlan and family, a family who has experienced very human heartache and loss, a family whose lives, by the end of this issue, have changed, whose eyes will be forever turned upward in fear of vengeful gods and demons.
Cates and crew waste no time in establishing the stakes at risk here, the scale at which this promising book will take place and this first issue, a teaser of dark and massive things to come, is all the better for it.
Thankfully, it seems our supposed hero is well enough equipped to fight those same gods and demons off.
With the cohesiveness and promise of this first issue, I, for one, am along for the ride.
Writer: Donny Cates
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Color: Jason Wordie
Letters and Design: John J. Hill
Publisher: Image
When a comic starts its first issue with a Cormac McCarthy quote there’s two equally likely scenarios. The first of which is, unfortunately, that comic is full of mismatched and uneven darkness, faux-grit, and some on-the-nose message about humankind’s inherent evil. The second of which, however, is that the comic pages that lay before you are a goddamn delightful sucker punch.
Thankfully, and wholly from cover to final page, God Country #1 is the second.
Donny Cates, who helmed one of my favorite comics of 2015, Dark Horse’s The Ghost Fleet, continues his incredible comics-writing streak here with a cosmologically delightful and dreadful debut issue. The first couple of pages might be disheartening to readers, the kind of family-heartache fodder that you may feel is too pedestrain for you, or too trodden to still be interseting. I implore you, please, keep going because the story that Cates sets up is so much more than that.
A gritty, rural Texas based, story of demons, gods, men, and…swords.
Awash in a rough mix of dirty and emotive lines from Shaw and a muted watercolor-esque palette from Wordie, we are introduced to Emmett Quinlan and family, a family who has experienced very human heartache and loss, a family whose lives, by the end of this issue, have changed, whose eyes will be forever turned upward in fear of vengeful gods and demons.
Cates and crew waste no time in establishing the stakes at risk here, the scale at which this promising book will take place and this first issue, a teaser of dark and massive things to come, is all the better for it.
Thankfully, it seems our supposed hero is well enough equipped to fight those same gods and demons off.
With the cohesiveness and promise of this first issue, I, for one, am along for the ride.
A Look Inside
