Publisher: Ascendant Comics
Writer/Creator: John Vinson
Pencils/Inks: Ger Curti
Greyscale: Ariel Nuttall
Letterer: Kel Nuttall
Editor: Steve Forbes

The opening to The Nobodies takes the form of a handwritten note from 96th President, a drug dealer by the name Marshall Howard.  The note is written in calligraphy, learned by Howard specifically to make it “old-time and legit”, and succinctly lays out the state of the world this story inhabits.  While the font itself is highly stylised and perhaps a little tricky to read in places, the story has a fairly simple hook.  The Rapture – the Christian ideology where ‘the just and the pure’ will be called up to Heaven – has taken place, leaving the remaining inhabitants of the world in chaos and disarray. Which would explain, presumably, why a lowly pot-dealer has managed to ascend to the rank of President of the United States (or POTus, to use a smirk-raising acronym).

We are introduced to this strange, post-rapture world through the eyes of Iggy, our main protagonist and a man who is as unfamiliar with his surroundings as we are.  Waking up with no memories of the last twenty years, Iggy stumbles his way through the world, clearly shell-shocked by his disturbing surroundings. The whole “waking up to the apocalypse” trope has been used a lot in the past (The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, etc.), but writer Vinson handles it skilfully here, managing to differentiate this story from its predecessors by ramping up the mystery and adding a few interesting wrinkles to the tale.

The artwork, provided here by Ger Curti, has a distinctive grayscale look, and on occasion has more than a hint of Charlie Adlard to it (a definitely compliment, in my book). While the level of detail suffers somewhat in the smaller panels, the larger spreads and close-ups show Cuti’s gift for emotion and dynamic facial expression.  He also does a great job with the action sequence later in the book, keeping the panels flowing beautifully once the bullets start flying.

The world which Vinson has created here is a dark, brutal one (as these things tend to be), with gangs of marauders and scavengers robbing and raping random survivors with inpunity, and death never seeming to be far away.  The dialogue is a little exposition-heavy in places, but in Iggy Vinson has crafted a compelling, intriguing protagonist who I found myself wanting to know more about.  In fact, I found myself wanting to know more about pretty much everything in this book, which is both a major success and a minor failure at the same time, in my opinion.

As a first issue, The Nobodies does a great job of establishing the main premise of the series, and introducing us to the main protagonist.  What it doesn’t do, however, is offer any answers.  At all.  We don’t know anything about Iggy’s past and his memory loss.  We don’t know anything about the mysterious characters who are monitoring him from afar.  We don’t even really know much about the ‘Nobodies’ themselves, who seem to be borderline comatose survivors of the Rapture who shuffle around aimlessly (we’re not using the ‘Z word’ here, folks) and are treated with disdain by the other survivors.  We also don’t really know what purpose the Presidential prologue serves, other than to establish the post-rapture society, as the whole “pot dealing” vibe that seems so prevalent in the book (including the cover) is never touched upon.

However, sometimes questions are a good thing, especially when kicking off a new series, and with a clever take on what could very easily fall into just another “post apocalyptic zombie story”, Vinson and the other creators have put together something truly intriguing here, and a title I’m looking forward to reading more of as soon as it becomes available.

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You can pick up the first issue of The Nobodies for just one dollar at the Ascendant Comics online store, or on Comixology.

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The writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson (aka Ceej)
Article Archive: Ceej Says