This is another example — it seems to be a bit of a theme this year! — of a graphic novel that pushes at the form to encourage readers to engage with the work. As such, it may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.
If it wasn’t clear by now, in addition to being very good comics, this is very good science fiction. There are many ways to approach science fiction in the comics form, but this might be the most genuinely speculative, the most deeply considered and textured, the most well-thought-out future history of any comic I’ve read since my old friend Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder – and Finder was one of my favorite comics of all time. There are no SFFnal elements that feel extraneous, tacked-on, or like they’re there just for Rule of Cool.
This first issue of DIE: Loaded is well-paced, setting up events deftly, and it’s full of hooks (and, no doubt, foreshadowing that will pay off down the line). Some of it you certainly have to have read the previous series to fully appreciate, but not all I would guess, and as a die-hard DIE-hard, I certainly wasn’t bothered by the callbacks.
The keen sense of visual design contrasts the childlike aspects of the character art. That’s not due to a lack of skill; this is clearly deliberate. There really is a striking degree of intentionality, here. The level of detail and the superabundance of decoration in the art and the page layouts makes that very clear.
Well, I found my comics Holy Grail, at the 2017 Toronto Comics Arts Festival, where I met the creator and was able to purchase a then-brand-new complete collection of the comic. It was a funny-animal comic, influenced by classic comic strips and really classic — like, pre-Warner Brothers — cartoons. A comic by a Canadian creator. A comic that was… a musical comedy?!
So when I received a review copy of a new anthology of gay male romance comics that, per the publicist, “…hearkens back to the days when romance comics topped the sales charts and it enlivens romance novel collections with a fun genre mix, all while joyfully celebrating Pride with its unambiguous focus on cis- and trans men in love by creators who know exactly how it feels.”
Well, I was sold.
