Silver City #1

Silver City #1

Aftershock Comics 2021

Written by Olivia Cuartero-Briggs

Illustrated by Luca Merli

Lettered by Dave Sharpe

When a young roughneck lands in Silver City, the gritty, purgatorial metropolis of the afterlife, she must adapt to her new existence, while attempting to uncover how and why she died. Her mission is derailed, however, when she rescues a newly dead girl from a mysterious kidnapping attempt, and discovers powerful, kinetic abilities.

Welcome to Silver City, where the sun never rises and nothing ever changes...until now.

The anticipation of this book since its announcement has more than lived up to its hype. I think the premise is fantastic and how this book opens is rather extraordinary to see. That we see LAX and the catalyst for the story right right off the bat and then we move into the main story is done extremely well. I like that we don’t spend a lot of time on the why of it and instead just accept that its happened and move forward from there. Olivia has impressed me with the way she’s telling this and I cannot stress enough how much of an impact that actually has because it makes the reading experience that much better.

I am enjoying 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 interesting and I like the explanation of how they are basically a blank slate when they arrive waiting for their memories to return. This allows for moments where they behave in ways that would be considered outside their norm which is something that is incredibly alluring. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way it pulls the reader deeper and deeper into the story.

I am enjoying the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and in some cases continue from an unseen place depending on the characters that we see and meet. The way that we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it manages to move the story ever forward is incredibly well achieved.

I am utterly and completely impressed with the quality of work we see on the interiors here. The linework is exquisite and how we see the faces and facial expressions not to mention the body language really helps to further the characterisation beautifully. How we see the varying weights and techniques in laying down the linework to bring out this level and quality of detail work that we see is astonishingly well rendered. The way we see backgrounds being utilised throughout is mindbogglingly brilliant to see. How they work within the composition of the panels to showcase the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book is priceless. 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 utterly gorgeous as well. The way that we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is seen shows a brilliant eye for how colour works, how light sources can change colours or how unexpected colours are seen but totally fit within how they should is so nice to see.

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This is a brilliant introductory issue to a series. There isn’t anything that isn’t kind of covered in some way shape or form and while some of it informs the reader more than others this is a stellar way to engage the readers mind and imagination as they turn the pages. This book is one of the prime examples of why Aftershock not only means top notch storytelling but it showcases why they are a leader in the industry when it comes to finding the talented creators whose work needs to be seen by everyone.