(Monkey) Business as Usual
I decided on reviewing a new release from image this week, as an issue one comic is hard to come by. Usually most Image titles are next level intriguing with (as I’ve mentioned before) two talented people teaming up and joining forces with interesting results. In the case of Angelic, writer Simon Spurrier and artist Caspar Wijngaard do manage to create something interesting but this does not mean its necessarily a good interesting.
The story begins with a young female winged monkey, Qora, living life as she does in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic world. Here, the monkeys worship a god seemingly linked to technology and dolphins fly around with jets for tails that also speak like well to do computers. As I wrote the previous sentence, all of what I wrote, every last word should have gotten my comic juice flowing, but alas, this comic seems to fall flat. Now, I understand the pressure of world building and that alone is a daunting task, but to then form a story you want to tell within said world increases the challenge. Simon and Caspar seem to do a good job at the first part but failed to grab my full attention for the story. It’s interesting and I’m curious to see what will happen, but I don’t feel compelled to grab the next issue as soon as it drops. I will, and I’m sure it will be fine, but I wont hassle the comic shop employees to make sure.
The art and colouring in this first issue is actually great, Caspar makes a design choice and sticks with it and the world benefits from it. This review will be the first time I mention the colouring and inking and for good reason. With the hard lines when needed and hyper light and sometimes neon colour aesthetic, it gives this comic a light-hearted tone, that it easily could’ve avoided.
I feel that the issue could’ve ended a few pages earlier and then it would’ve had me more invested but introducing too many ideas and multiple characters right at the end of an issue did not work for this universe and idea. I didn’t love it, but I very much want to. Here’s hoping next month I go ape over the second issue.