Never, Never #2

Never, Never #2

Virus/Heavy Metal Comics 2021

Written by Mark McCann

Illustrated by PHil Buckenham

Coloured by Agnese Pozza

Lettered by David Withers

Winter is seduced by the boy-sprite, Petros - off to the Never, Never. A place where children never grow up and adults are the enemy. What would such a place look like? Where resources are scarce. Time passes, but age is obsolete. War with adults, starved and insane from constant battle, is the norm. What would age-less boys free of civility and role-models be willing to do to survive. To live forever. A young girl will face her greatest test; an island full of immortal cannibals with a dark secret that sustains its existence, in the most unnatural and awful of ways. Peter Pan meets The Hunger Games with a dose of Lord of the Flies. A survival horror fantasy inspired by classics but intended for a new age.

I am really digging this story as it takes the base tale and warps into something more suited to the Brothers Grimm, or actually any original fairy tale that’s been Disneyfied, and meant to give children a reason to listen to their parents or suffer a similar fate. Good Grief Charlie Brown am I enjoying the wickedly twisted way this is being told.

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 as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter as it fleshes these characters out further. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we’re sucked into this beautifully.

I greatly appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I love seeing the different avenues we see being explored as it really expands those who live in Never, Never and how they got there while also showing us what set Petros into becoming who he is now. 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 exceedingly well.

The interiors here aren’t as impressive as the first issue or at least I remember them being. Don’t get me wrong these are more traditional comic book style in appearance and they are superbly rendered with their varying weights and techniques as they create the detail in the work we see. I do like the way that we see backgrounds being utilised to expand and enhance the moments as well as how they work within the composition of the panels as it brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is great. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is rendered really rather quite well.

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This story is utterly amazing. It is dark, twisted and has all the elements that make it so highly successful, if you aren’t reading you need to fix that NOW. Fans of Grimm, Sleepy Hollow or horror in general will absolutely love this, those that love the fairy tales will eat this up. The way that this is being told with such stellar writing and intriguing characterisation along with these solid interiors make this an exciting adventurous story. I highly, highly recommend that you read this wonderfully dark, twisted fantasy series.