Driven by gorgeous art from Lorenzo De Felici, Oblivion Song #18 out this week from Image Comics, gives more insight into the nefarious plans of the Faceless Men and their ally.
With The Walking Dead ending, Oblivion Song is Robert Kirkman’s baby now. In TWD he gave the readers many characters to fall in love with and many characters to fear. De Felici makes fearing some of these adversaries in Oblivion Song pretty easy. The monsters roaming Oblivion are already terrifying enough, so throw in some evil experimentation and it just gets worse.
Annalisa Leoni is the colorist and Rus Wooton is the letterer. Wooton is a veteran and no stranger to working with Kirkman. You’d almost expect the both to be working on every book together at this point. Oblivion Song #18 is action packed so Wooton gets to stretch out and let his talents show.
Just about every sci-fi noise you could imagine streaks across the pages of this issue. Large letters sweeping across the panels and never once taking anything away from the art in the panel. The lettering meshes so well with the art as a dominant part of the panel, but not overpowering.
De Felici has a uncanny ability to show intensity and emotion on his character’s faces. Even from a distance his characters do not have emotionless scribble faces, everything is detailed. While enjoying the action sequences in Oblivion, I always forget how beautiful his realistic environments are.
When the brothers drop in on a few unsuspecting youngsters, the neighborhood looks just like suburbia where I grew up. Fences and mom-mobiles line the streets in all their glory. Leoni uses this time to shine as the bright colors of the real world glisten brightly in the sunlight.
For anyone that has not read any issues of Oblivion Song yet, it is a more adult take on Stranger Things. Oblivion Song takes the idea of a hidden alternate reality existing in the same space and elaborates, here it is called Oblivion and there it is called the Upside Down.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW
Oblivion Song is about if the Demogorgons were collecting humans for science experiments and an entire community of people are living in the Upside Down willingly. So far no super human abilities in this book, but with TWD and Invincible having ended, maybe we’ll see a crossover at some point, maybe this is all happening in the same universe. Haha.
The first page reveals some interesting family drama. Ed mentions that Lucy and Scott have been taken, prompting Nathan to ask “Who is Scott?” When Ed reveals that Scott is his son, Nathan seems taken aback that he would name his son after their father. It would appear one of them had a much better relationship with their father than the other as Ed doesn’t have a response to that for Nathan.
From this extremely short conversation, it would give the impression that Ed had a decent relationship with his father, considering he named his son after him. Ed’s inability to say anything to Nathan’s question about naming his son Scott definitely seems like some guilt, like Nathan expected Ed to also have some disdain for their father. If this is true, it has me racking my brain why Ed would be the brother that started a life in Oblivion and not Nathan.
Kirkman is sneaking what promises to be some great family drama directly before some amazingly drawn action panels, so as readers, we forget what happened and our attention is as easily distracted as the characters in the story. His storytelling is unique and this issue is a great example of his style.
With TWD gone, readers are left scrambling for something to read, Oblivion Song provides the same amazing characters that readers can relate to and it creates a universe where the environment fights back. I can relate to Ed Cole in the simple fact that I had the same haircut in high school.
There are people you love in this universe and people you hate, and just existing seems to be pretty dangerous. If you loved The Walking Dead, Oblivion Song has all the best parts of that story with added color.
