Broken Frontier

It’s been a long time since an original graphic novel served as an extended prelude to an upcoming ongoing.  I fondly recall Coyote, Fallen Angels, or Jerry Ordway’s 1994 The Power of Shazam.  All were brilliant stand-alone tales, and all would have performed too-odd, too-awkward first issues or opening story arcs.  They were overlong threads that, while introductions, weren’t much in the way of honest beginnings, not more than they were what I’d call openings.  They stood alone, but weren’t an end in and of themselves.  Birth, by newcomer Michael S. Bracco, is the first GN in a long while to fit this bill, offering up a tale of spot-on mythological sci-fi/fantasy status, whose grandeur marks it something more than mere character origin (though it’s that as well).  It’s also an otherworldly universe-building blueprint, one necessary to move into the upcoming series from Bracco and Alterna, Novo.

Birth opens on a primordial Earth-like planet, where two dominant species, the Aquans and the Terans - the sea and the land mammals, respectively - are engaged in constant war with each other.  But each species bears a remarkable flaw besides: the Aquan women die at childbirth, unequivocally; the Teran men, then, in counterpoint, die to complete conception, literally giving their hearts to the women that carry their unborn child.  As time goes on, and the imbalance on either side grows, a crisis point is reached, and the unthinkable is considered as resolution.

That’s the beginning and the beginning of the middle, though if you want to know more, well, you’re just going to have to pick up the book and discover the final fascinating fate of these species for yourself.  I can guarantee: it’s not quite what you think it’ll be.  Bracco scripts the story like heart-pumping pagan scripture, like something religious, though nothing so dry as the more contemporary holy books, but more something from the chthonic depths of Greek epics, Babylonian epics, or beyond, something tribal and revered.  The movements of the story are huge, yet the focus always singular, on a particular player or two, so that the through-line reads like Peter David’s Atlantis Chronicles or Jack Kirby’s Fourth World: something wholly larger than life and yet not entirely unlike it.

Hardly a spoken line of dialogue is uttered, as Bracco relies largely on caption box narrative to drive the plot, like a rousing timpani beat, to an inevitable crescendo-conclusion.  The pacing is subtle, but swift, the events momentous although subdued.  Think of Hellboy by way of Aquaman and you’ll be close, but even then, only half a cigar.  The other half?

Bracco’s use of sparse but considered text alongside large paneled compositions to manage maximum impact brings to mind the truest Mad Libs insert-titles-here summation of Birth: in both art and tone Bracco is Hellboy by way of Aquaman as penned by Dr. Seuss.  And that is something worth reading, tu est d’accord, n’est-ce pas?  The art wields the same snaking, wild brushstroke of the inimitable good Doctor., as well as the thicker, blacker overlay of Mignola, with a tale as supernatural and heady as it is simple and nearly child-like.  It’s a marvelous balancing act, and Bracco pulls it off as though born to it.

Birth is a memorable stand-alone epic.  It’s a book that can be cherished as a singular read, devoured in one sitting, nothing necessary to come beyond.  But for those won over and willing as me, it leads into the upcoming series Novo , Bracco’s first serial chronicling…well…but that would be telling.  Read Birth first.  Then you’ll want more, believe me.  No matter how much you don’t want yet another comic to add to your pull list, you’ll be wanting whatever Bracco cooks up to spin out on a plate for us hungry hungry hippos.  Satisfying, filling, more to come.   Eats don’t get better than this.

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Birth can be ordered through your favorite comic shop with the Diamond Code: DEC07 3331.

Or, alternately, you can go to Wowio.com and download the whole thing for free.  Yeah.  How’s them apples!