Broken Frontier

Bizarre New World, the original mini, was exceptional for its staunch focus: a man, in the real world, can suddenly fly, and what would that mean?  What would he do?  What would the days and weeks immediately following such a revelation entail?  The book kept a tight reign on its story and “hero”, the overweight single father named Paul Krutcher, yet it equally was relentless in exploring the many possibilities of a real man who gained the power of real, unaided flight.  Via conversations modeled after the writer’s own search for theoretical answers, the entire world of BNW wasn’t so bizarre at all, or rather, it was as solidly planted on terra firma as any book on flying could ever be.  Even better, the story took a startling, entirely unexpected and jaw-dropping turn in its final issue, which leads us into…

The (dreaded) Sequel, though in BNW’s case, it’s Book Two of a proposed trilogy, and now, picking up immediately where the first mini came to a close, Population Explosion acts like an episode of the Twilight Zone that, for once, doesn’t end before the furthest reaches of its crazy-cool concept are explored.  The first series asked “what if a man could fly?”.  This follow-up stand-alone graphic novel asks: “what if the whole world…at the same time…could suddenly fly?”  I can’t even imagine how intimidating such an idea was to approach.  The sheer wealth of knowledge needed and real-world consideration to indeed take into consideration—in a way, its like writing a post-apocalyptic scenario that no one else has trail-blazed before you, and so all the details are up to the writer to define and then pray he’s done a halfway decent job in doing so.

Thankfully, writer Skipper Martin uses the formula he utilized to such precision success in the first series, to blow this second book straight out of the stratosphere.  Not only is Martin’s hero, Paul, a very lifelike protagonist (being molded after Martin’s own image and life), and therefore a natural foil to the rest of the world as they take to the skies like the mother of all global second-childhood regressions, but Martin’s storytelling rhythm of real-life conversations, obviously day-dream inspired displays of flying-as-reality, and wonderfully candid internal monologues that will strike most as universal, conversations and considerations we’ve all had inside our own heads, dialogues thought-through in the exact same manner as we all must think them, makes for a read that can only be described as riveting (I wasn’t able to stop until I was done, every page demanding I turn the next).

There’s an engrossing quality to Martin’s scripting, an obvious sense that the dialogue is dialogue we ourselves might use or hear, conversations executed with a flow that seems unerringly familiar.  For a book that’s meant to show a fantastical concept as it might occur in the really-real world, this is a part that moves the story from an interesting concept to an honest-to-god pleasure.

And the story—millions of people, thousands at any given point and place, all flying, suddenly, without warning, and somehow, Martin writes about this idea, and artist Christopher Provencher draws it all, panel after panel, and while the pace is breakneck and the script sparse more often than not, there’s always the sense of inundation, that the event and the comic is too much.  It’s overwhelming, a moment of momentous change and tragedy and wonderment, and yet Martin and Provencher don’t stylize like in a super-hero book.  There’s nothing slick in the proceedings here, nothing dynamic or hammer-over-the-head-look-this-this-is-BIG genre comic book moments.  The story remains small, for all its inherent grandiosity, the tone real, for all the events’ surrealism.  The creators refuse to make this a Hollywood-inspired piece, and god bless ‘em for it.

This isn’t to say, however, that Provencher keeps the art uncomplicated—he draws dozens upon dozens of flying people, per panel , on nearly every page.  He manages to show chaos and small flecks of order, all the possible mid-air frills and calamities as our hero Paul wanders through this bizarre new world of everyone in the air, few if any playing it safe or smart in the wake of such unexpected change.  The pages of Paul flying solo through abandoned desert night air, and even the sort-of costume Paul dons due to a particularly clever story conceit, it’s all portrayed with a dazzling level of toned-down style and solid detail, a wealth of expression and character.  Matched with the colors of Wes Dzioba (who had to bloody color all the flying people, every last one!), Population Explosion is a true evolution from the vastly more single-focused work the first BNW mini was.

Bizarre New World was an easy crowd-pleaser, and showcased a talented new writer who discovered a brand new way of approaching a whimsical topic with a stripped-down voice and author attitude.  Population Explosion is everything BNW was, only inordinately more complex and dramatic and, most importantly, it solidifies that Martin and Provencher aren’t one-trick ponies or one-hit wonders, even if this is technically the same series.  I cannot recommend this book enough.  Read the first mini (it’s easy enough to purchase through the Ape Entertainment Website), and then prepare yourself for a speculative fiction odyssey unlike any other out there.  This is one of those books where you suddenly realize what publishers mean when they ask for the seemingly oxymoronic “original but familiar” new idea.