Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, Gabriel Bautista, Joshua Hale Fialkov, oni press, the bunker, The Life After

Oni's The Life After #1-3 Asks 'What If God Was WTF?' – Plus Free Comic: The Bunker #1

By Ed Saul, who has had a sneak-peek at issues #1-3 of The Life After by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Gabriel Bautista from Oni Press

Issue # 1 of The Life After doesn't dress up its central theme too showily: it's clearly about monotony, and a life lived in its grip. In a very Joseph Campbell move, the narrative shows the hero – bored metropolitan Jude – trapped in an endless loop of commutes, office work and a lonely apartment, which he cannot help but accept for the sake of simply staying alive. There is, of course, an escape. Or a sort-of escape.

In Issue # 2, we 're given a little bit more context as to the world in which our protagonist has landed himself, with the startling revelation that his entire circular-looped life is entirely due to him being trapped in a purgatory for suicide victims. Except, of course, unlike everyone else he doesn't remember killing himself.

This brings him even further to the attention of the shadowy tech figures monitoring his new existential crisis, and  as Issue # 3 opens we are party to a Revelation of rather apocalyptic proportions.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the creators are going for from the first few issues. There's certainly a good deal of mystery-within-another-mystery laid in there, of the kind we'd have come to expect from the creators of Morning Glories or The Prisoner. There's certainly a good quota of quirky characters (Ernest Hemingway turns up as Jude's quasi-spirit guide in the close of Issue # 1), but not quite as much of a sense of what they're doing or what's at stake if they don't succeed.

This might be due to the comic's attempting to get too much done all at once. Typically a strong first issue will put us through a mini-adventure to both set the stage and give us a good impression of the central characters, in somewhat of a balance. On the one end of the spectrum we have Chew #1, where the setting is glossed over in a page and the focus is entirely on character; on the other Six-Gun Gorilla #1, where the titular simian doesn't even appear until the last page as Si Spurrier sinks us deliriously into the alternate future world he'd crafted.

But The Life After appears to want to have its cake and eat it, throwing a massive amount of environmental detail and plot at us while only allowing character to squeak through the edge ways. What, we're left asking, can Jude possibly want? Why is Hemingway sticking with him? What threat does the Big Bad pose if our characters are already dead?

This leads us to moments of cognitive dissonance – e.g., the moment in the first chapter wherein Jude is seemingly able to say exactly the right thing to a young woman about the baby she miscarried, despite never speaking to her once before in his life. This after a horribly graphic scene that seems better suited to Avatar Press output than something from Oni.

As muddled as the writing may be, however, it's offset by the terrifically detailed art, which does a decent amount of heavy lifting both creatively and in terms of character and setting. The opening of Issue # 3 alone is one of the more spectacular takes on the subject matter that I've ever seen.

The Life After has a chance amongst better-known indie books on the same subject if it tightens things up a bit – get the characters more clear, the dialogue punchier and the plot moving forward at a measured pace rather than lurching. If it keeps getting drawn by Gabriel Bautista, though, I'll certainly keep reading it.

All our times have come here, but now they're gone. Ed Saul don't fear the reaper. Find out how…if you can!

*Plus, here's our special Free Comic from Oni Press, Issue #1 of The Bunker by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari:

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