Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: boom, Comics, extermination, Review, si spurrier

Extermination Is Watchmen Meets How I Met Your Mother

Si Spurrier is best known for writing articles for Bleeding Cool. But in his spare time he writes for 2000AD, Marvel, Avatar and basically everyone in the world. His first Boom! title is about to come out, Extermination with Jeffrey Edwards, and because we're friends, I was able to steal the first issue from his flash drive at a pub meet without him realising that it had gone.

So, what's it like?

This is a comic of two time zones. Before the event and after the event, and we flip between the two very different worlds and the two very different relationships between the central characters. That bit is like How I Met Your Mother.

Jumping between these two timelines is smoothed over by events and dialogue that line up, to make the transition less jarring. And the alien invasion is some transdimensional incursion of aliens into our world creating a bizarre new state of affairs. That bit is like Watchmen.

Jeffrey Edwards also uses different art styles and colour schemes to differentiate the two worlds. from a cleaner, poppier, Liefeldian brighter past to a grimmer, darker, more textured and detailed future.

I'm not sure how well it works. It's more that I can see its intent but doubt its execution. The time shifts are jarring, and the language used to smooth the way seems to exacerbate that clash, it feels clumsy and forced, making reading it feel a bit like…

…yeah like that.

What does really work is the change in relationships between the two male leads, Nox and Red Reaper, that still echoes the previous relationship. A superhero and a supervillain set up against each other in traditional comic book roles, heightened even, now fighting alongside each other to survive. Suddenly they are no longer conquering the world, or saving the day, just saving their skins against a common foe and finding a strained but compatible way of surviving together, mutually. They'd better end up fucking each other by the end of this comic though, Si, or its a wasted journey.

The other standout is the nature of the aliens themselves, manifesting themselves on our plane of existence with a technology that taps into our greatest fears. The idea of what alien life could be is often wasted in comic books, here Spurrier does some real exploring.with some interesting antagonosts – if that is what that they are. It could well be that the book's main antagonists are also the protagonists, and they just haven't worked that out yet.

Extermination #1 by Si Spurrier and Jeffrey Edwards is published by Boom! on JUne the 6th is the US and Canada and June 7th in the UK. The first issue is priced at $1.

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