Blackacre #1

            Blackacre, to me, seems like it’s going to be the Homeland of comics. For the people that don’t watch Homeland (which should be nobody; everybody should watch that damn show), it’s your own goddamn fault you don’t get the reference and I don’t feel badly for you.

            This is a really smart comic book.

            It’s relevant, but it’s not bogged down by it, it’s dystopian, but not in a shitty way (I’m looking at you, Will Smith in “I Am Legend”), and in its single issue it’s already more layered and nuanced than most books get in their entire runs. And this is Duffy Boudreau’s first comic.

            The book provides sufficient backstory in an intriguing way, and artfully cuts between different timelines, as Boudreau and artist Wendell Cavalcanti steer the reader smoothly along the way. This is not easy to do, and this team allows to happen without so much as a pause from the reader to figure out what’s happening.

            The brunt of the run, it appears, will take place around a society known as BlackAcre, one that rose from the fall of America, populated by the rich and elite, as democracy’s last disciples.

            Everything sounds well and good.

            Everything isn’t.

            Past that, I won’t say much for fear of ruining the experience.

            The point is, this is a really stellar book, in what appears to be a slew of new, stellar books from Image Comics. The creators are inventive and daring, the dialogue natural and smooth, the characters rich and multi-faceted, and the concepts are just really damn good, too.

            I do have to say that it’s a lot easier to review a bad book than it is a good one, and I’m going to be getting upset if Image Comics and their creators keep making my job harder. Maybe Marvel will republish AvX to compensate.