The Massive

Whew, ok, I'm finally getting a new routine and finding time for things. School starting, football, classes full of actual human beings, all have disrupted my recent cubicle life. No worries though, slowly I will get back into it.

I have a stack, a stack, of comics that I haven't been able to read. I've fallen out of the loop on a few storylines. Slowly, I try to read one or two when I have a few minutes. One book that I picked up on a whim has become an underground favorite in my stack; The Massive.

The Massive is a different kind of book. I liken it to a 60's spy thriller / Johnny Quest sort of style. The art is clean, very stylish. The characters are strong and recognizable. The story is mysterious, leading, going forward and backwards at the same time. The basic premise is that not far in the future, a series of catastrophic ecological events causes a "crash" in the world, effectively creating an apocalyptic setting. The Massive is a ship, one of two vessels that cruised the pre-crash oceans defending the earth's resources from commercial destruction. The Massive is now lost. It's sister ship, the Kapital, and it's small crew, are on a mission to re-locate the Massive; at the same time avoiding pirates and environmental changes.

I really like the style and feel of the book. This is not a superhero book, it is more like a mystery set in a slightly recognizable world, all the while you have this feeling of dread looming in the background. The art in this book is new. It feels like a combination of clean pencils and inks and some computer/photo generated images. The colors are what really set the stage for the story; many of the layouts and arcs are done in monochromatic tones which really help with the flow of the story. Flashbacks and scene cuts are easily followed because of the shift in colors.

One thing that is REALLY amazing about this book: NO ADS!!! When you read The Massive you will notice that you are flipping page after page of comic book, not advertisements. It's weird, but in a great way. I'm not sure how Dark Horse is doing it, but every publisher should figure it out.

The Massive is a three part introduction. No questions were answered, no Massive was ever sighted. Hopefully interest was good enough that it becomes a regular series. I could see a lot of possibilities with the Kapital chasing the Massive's signal, always just over the next horizon, criss crossing the Earth's oceans, exploring a new world.