Glénat has relaunched its comic book collection in recent years with comics different from Marvel and DC. Is this the case with The Dying & the Dead , Jonathan Hickman's new series?
Pure action?
The volume begins with a beautiful, very cinematic introduction where the reader has the impression of seeing the camera move. We witness the massacre at a wedding with exploded faces. Two sisters meet and one shoots the other. The tension will not cease until the last box.
A dense history
The reader is initially bewildered. The scenario takes place in two and then three different locations with people with mysterious motivations. However, clues are gradually emerging. A people of Men in White come to help a colonel whose wife is terminally ill. He agrees to help them find a mystical object coveted by a secret Nazi group based in a former Hitler bunker. The colonel then makes a journey to find his former war comrades. They all know the city and have already met the Immortals during the Vietnam War. Since then each has followed a different path – Everett made his fortune in oil, Fynn is a senator, Doyle is cancerous in a nursing home, Martin is in a federal prison. The passage of time has weakened these soldiers who are teaming up to help one of their own.
A top-notch artistic team
Jonathan Hickman, who marked the Avengers during a magnificent cosmic epic, is in the script for this multi-volume story. Ryan Bodenheim has a realistic drawing that makes the narrative more plausible. He chooses a fairly tight framing centered on the emotions of the characters. Violence is visible on faces. The scenery is also splendid as the beautiful full page on the city of Immortals Baduri. What struck me the most were the colors of Michael Garland. Each box often has a solid color – white, gray, brown – that corresponds to a character or emotion.
This fable about grief succeeds in mixing action and feeling. We feel that the comic is thought as a film with great spectacle. Each soldier represents a power – Everett for money, Fynn for speech… We do not yet understand everything but this beginning makes you want to read more.
