By: Kurtis J. Wiebe (writer), Riley Rossmo (art), Owen Gieni (colors), Ed Brisson (letters)
The Story: Hundreds of years after the fall of humanity, a young woman defends the last outpost of humans from mechanical monstrosities.
Review: This was a little disappointing on a couple of fronts. As I mentioned in my “Picks of the Week“, the primary attraction on this issue was the art of Riley Rossmo. I loved him on Proof and loved him in Cowboy Ninja Viking. I even liked the art in Green Wake a lot, but found the narrative in that story to be really boring. So, despite my reluctance to read another comic written by Wiebe (he also wrote The Intrepids which I ended up not caring for much and I didn’t enjoy Peter Panzerfaust as much as everyone else), I wanted to give this a try. Surely Rossmo drawing post-apocalypse stuff would really take advantage of his scratchy and vital style.
Well, it turns the art wasn’t quite what I hoped for, but it might not be Rossmo’s fault. One problem is that it looks like someone (Rossmo himself? The colorist?) cleaned up Rossmo’s linework. One of the wonderful things about Rossmo’s work in some of those previous works was the scratchy rawness of everything. He used to have lots of stray lines all over the page and I miss that. Here it looks like those lines originally existed around the characters, but that someone erased them. Like I said, I don’t know if Rossmo is experimenting and trying to make his style more “mainstream” or if the colorist just digitally removed those lines to allow for better coloring, but the old Rossmo style is much better and had a unique energy that not many artists can pull off.
To be clear, the linework in Debris #1 is still very good, but it wasn’t quite what I had hoped for, nor is it better than some of Rossmo’s earlier works.
The coloring in this issue doesn’t really work either. I do like that the coloring is laid down with colored pencils (or the digital equivalent of colored pencils) because it matches the remaining rawness of Rossmo’s line art. But, the color palate is weird. Lots of pastels. Would the last outpost of humanity really invest time in dying fabrics pastel blue? It sounds like they barely have enough water, food, etc. Plus, this pastel color kinda fights against the energy of Rossmo’s art.
As for the story itself, it isn’t “bad”….but there isn’t much compelling me either. The whole post-apocalypse thing is kinda played out. I do enjoy the genre at its best, but this issue showed how expertly it must be handled or else the reader can get bored. The basic set-up is that humanity “fell” hundreds of years ago and all that’s left is this desert outpost with a Protector and her ~20-year old protege, Maya, providing safety from these mechanical monstrosities. We get some cool scenes of Maya taking down the mechanical monsters and before you know it, Maya has assumed the role of Protector and set out to find a fabled land of milk and honey. It’s not bad, but begs a lot of questions: What created the mechs? Why do they look like animals? Why does no one in the village question having a singular 20-year old to provide protection for everyone?
In fact, it’s this last element that falls flat. Maya is a cool character, but it’s just hard to buy that a society that has held on by their fingernails for centuries is trusting their safety to a person that young. It just flies in the face of millennia of military experience where people Maya’s age are useful to a fighting force because they are fast and strong, but also foolish enough to be used as cannon fodder while the truly elite 30-year old fighters sneak around and flank the enemy. The whole thing just smacks of stories where children are the heroes and I’m not sure I want to explore that angle.
But, hey–it’s digital, so if the internet explodes with accolades for Debris #2, I’ll check it out. Until then, I’ll be looking forward to catching Rossmo on the just solicited Bedlam #1 with Nick Spencer (the art looks SICK!).
Conclusion: Not bad, but nothing great either. Rossmo’s art is kinda neutered by the coloring. The story will serve some people just fine, but I didn’t find anything wonderful enough to come back for issue #2.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell
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