White Sky #1 // Review
Five years ago, the sky turned white and the world was destroyed by ghosts. Now Violet and her father are moving across the wasteland that is the San Francisco Bay area. He’s telling her not to look back. She’s concerned about it catching them. He tells her that it won’t so long as they keep moving. They walk a path cluttered with trash and abandoned vehicles. This is life after the ghost apocalypse. This is White Sky #1. Writer William Harms and artist J.P. Mavinga open a post-apocalyptic horror story featuring color by Lee Loughridge. The opening issue shows a great deal of promise...fused as it is betwen psychological and supernatural horror.
The snow is falling in Southern California. Violet and her father are walking through a snowstorm. Suddenly a hiss is heard. Violet and her father duck for cover. It was a powerful force that cut clear through a whole section of the path. Later-on they find a little place to camp for the night. Nice place. Possibly a concrete shed of some sort. Completely enclosed from the weather. Then there’s a sudden sound in the middle of the night. Violet’s dad get his shotgun. He’s going to investigate...
Harms delivers a starkly engaging post-apocalyptic horror that sets-in over the course of the first several pages of the first issue of the series. Father and daughter move through a wasteland. It’s a very striking opening that isn’t at all rushed. There’s just enough time over the course of the first issue to establish who Violet is. Harms makes it easy to want to care about Violet without going into a long history with a whole lot of background. That sense of empathy between reader and main character is going to be really important as things move forward into the series beyond.
Mavinga’s ary is a bit sparse on details. The artist delivers enough line art to illustrate a southern California that civilization has completely evaporated from...in a hurry. There’s a profound sense of cataclysm about the page that finds contrast against a couple of scrappy people who have somehow managed to survive for five years after the holocaust. As little detail as makes it to page and panel...there’s still a profound sense of immersive atmosphere about the page that is made all the more impressive by the clever work of Loughridge’s colors.
Harns firmly establishes a basic mood and tone for the series in the first issue. There isn't a whole lot of detail being delivered about exactly what it was that happened and exactly how it was that it happened. There's a lot of mystery flurrying around the page it's father and daughter struggle for the basic elements of survival limits snow and rain and a whole lot of desolation. I'll be emotional impact of the first issue really feels like it could be going somewhere. There's a powerful haunting sense of the supernatural that also sets in around the edges of everything.
