Green Class Vol.1 Pandemic

Green Class Vol.1 Pandemic

Europe Comics 2019

Written by Jérôme Hamon

Illustrated by David Tako

A group of young Canadians is out on a field trip in the Louisiana swamps when an epidemic breaks out, unlike any the world has ever seen. The highly contagious virus turns people into seemingly mindless creatures, monstrous in appearance and inhumanly strong when provoked. To halt its rapid spread, the U.S. government walls off the area. When one of their own succumbs to the disease, the kids are trapped in the contagion zone. To survive, they must fight bloodthirsty militias and infected creatures alike, as they hold out hope they can find a cure for their friend, before he becomes a menace to them all.

I love finding books that I’ve never seen before and for whatever reason the comics that come out of Europe are so incredibly stellar that they seem to eclipse what the United States does. From the moment I laid eyes on the first page I knew I was in for something special and I was right. This manages to take something seemingly innocent as the flu and turns it into a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen. It takes what we went through and are still going through and adds this whole science fiction element to it and makes it into something quite extraordinary.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development we see through the dialogue, the character interaction, how they behave and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances flesh the characters out in some magnificent ways. The pacing is extraordinary and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, introducing us to the characters and the virus itself we are caught up in this strange, riveting and thought provoking story.

I greatly appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. The avenues that we see open up for us and how the layers within them are explored and whether or not they work with the main arc or simply swirl around it they add this beautiful depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow and how it movies the story forward is impeccably rendered.

The interiors here are absolutely bloody mindbogglingly brilliant to see. I don’t know what it is about European comics and computer generated artwork but by the gods this is utterly gorgeous work. The quality of the work is outrageously good and how we see the imagery is so strong with the linework, it’s varying weights and techniques in bringing out this level & quality of detail work is mind numbing. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a masterful eye for storytelling. The colour work is beyond brilliant! The light sources and how they cast shadows blows me away. The various hues and tones within the colours and how they are being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is bloody brilliant. David is a master visual storyteller he really gets the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope of the book as seen through the work he does here.

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This story takes on a life of its own once it gets started and as we see the power of friendship cement the roles these kids play you become so engaged in this story. I wish my friends would be this loyal or I would be this loyal to my friends as we see happening here. Eerily familiar and yet leagues from reality this is intelligently written with extraordinary characterisation with these mindbogglingly brilliant interiors making this one of those books you inevitably will fall in love with.