Moths #1

Moths #1

AWA Upshot Studios 2021

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Illustrated by Mike Choi

Lettered by Sal Cipriano

Emily Kai has immense power inside her. However, the moment she taps into it a clock starts. She will have only six months to live. As Emily enters into this journey, she contemplates how to use her gifts to bring beauty into the world in the limited time she has to use them.

I found myself drawn into this in some beautiful ways. We see Emily’s reasoning here and why she wants to see what her power is and to hopefully help folks in the world with it. When you have something and you don’t know what it is but you can feel it coursing through your body you want or better yet have that need to know what it is. I know when I got sick I knew there was something inside me before I even went to the Doctor so when they confirmed it I knew it was better to know than live blindly. This power that she has works the same way, once it becomes active you’ve got a limited life span left and the cost of power takes its toll on the body and burns it out. It is a brilliant aspect and one that many different people can connect to.

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 is phenomenal thanks to how we see the dialogue, the character development and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter. The pacing here is great and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, introducing the characters and just this part of their world is beautifully done.

I really appreciate how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and are shown. There is some great action/reaction moments that show motivation and then there’s a few things that swirl around the story that add to the depth and complexity of the book and it’s really something to see. The way we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved extremely well.

The interiors here are absolutely bloody gorgeous. How we see the linework through the varying weights and techniques is brilliantly rendered. The level and quality that we see in the attention to detail here is mind numbing and that we see this in the backgrounds as well is brilliantly rendered. The composition within the panels as they bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book is so well achieved. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show this masterful eye for storytelling. The colour work is mindbogglingly brilliant as well. The way we see the hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work not only blow me away but they showcase a master colourist in action. The realism that they bring to the page is unmistakable and while the linework is utterly amazing it doesn’t reach this incredible level until the colour work is added and by god this work leaves me utterly gobsmacked.

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It’s a beautiful book with an amazing story. This is so smartly written with heart and substance that is surrounded by these interiors that are nearly photographic in nature making this as one of if not the strongest book we’ve seen lately. I’m totally chuffed right now after reading this and cannot believe not only my personal connection that I’ve formed to this but knowing that each person will have their own personal connection as well is stunningly brilliant.