Hope 7 #1

Posted: Tuesday, October 10, 2000
By: Darren Schroeder

Cover of Hope 7 #1 Writer(s): Timothy Shea
Artist(s): Ed Loven
Publishers: Shadow Song
From: USA
Price:

Eve and her brother Tyler have been living in their family home, cut off from a world that is deserted and desolate. They appear to be the last two left of their family, the rest have died for some undisclosed reason. Now Tyler decides that it is time to leave, but at the last minute Eve tells him of her decision to stay. After wandering off into the desert Tyler soon meets up with Keren when a Drear, a wolf like creature that inhabits the planet nearly kills Tyler. Keren has returned to the planet to find that the settlement she left has gone. All that remains are the crosses in the cemetary and the dust, everywhere the dust.

There are a lot of questions left unanswered in this book. It makes you work to piece things together from clues in the dialogue and occasional internal monologues. The planet looks to be dying, that much is obvious but Timothy leaves things open.

Ed does much the same with the artwork. There are only a couple of obvious high tech objects on display. Mostly we see the dust covered planet and the humans (?) traveling across it by foot. Ed does a particulary nice job on the Drear, managing to make it look sufficiency ferocious without it becoming too fantastical. His work on the characters looks quite nice as well, though occasionally the facial features get a bit loose.

Timothy paces the plot quite well but I found that some of the conversations verge close to soap opera stuff when Tyler and Eve talk about his planed departure. That said, for those of us tiring of superhero ultra violence a character driven comic is a welcome relief.

In a word: Promising.

P.S. Be sure to pick up the mini comic that Timothy and Ed have put together: Before Hope. It has a nice five page story that gives a bit of background on Eve and the settlement. You also get some early sketches and layouts for issue one that give an insight into the development of the book. But wait, there's more, you also get a spooky two page ghost story.

In a Word: Illuminating.



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