Broken Frontier

On a distant alien world where a virus has rendered 80% of a human colony blind, the population has been split into sighted Masters and blind slaves. This is the story of the survivors from the uprising of said slaves and the new ways of both the Sighted as well as the Blind...and the quest to see who in the end is the truly blind(ed).

The surviving Masters have found a specific drug for their nurture and the leader of the Masters (Rom) has sent out his drug addicted brother Vol to a nearby village to try and lure them out of their secret drug supplies. Rom uses this drug to keep his fellow Masters under his rule and he will stop at nothing to get to this drug, even if that means sacrificing his own brother Vol. Vol is taken in by the former Slaves and slowly detoxed and in the meanwhile gets to know his former lover and child as well as the secrets of the village and its Elders.

This is a tale of love and personal discoveries, more than its science fiction setting would predict. No techno babble, but tales of endurement, finding special gifts from within and seeking retribution for the wrong reasons...those are the true merits for this book.

The graphic novel reads like a movie script and has lovely colored dream sequences which - by comparison and by relativism - show the reader what is real and what is not. Color as a means of storytelling, as it were.

The art is economical and dialogue is used minimally. This helps the reader not to digress from the heart of the spun tale, thus giving more meaning to the whole project. And since the art does not divert from the story, the writer also leaves introductions and locations out of the equation and permits the dynamic and interaction of the players to be the main treat.

To the end the whole team makes the best effort possible to harmonize the thrust of the story, which makes this a more than interesting reading...no art show, but truly strong characterization to focus upon.

This thick volume takes its time and sets its own pace, to reel the reader in and have him satisfied fully at the end of it.

The conclusion seems recognizable in its themes that wrap up in only one way possible. It feels easy and it feels good and not rushed at the same time.


Hum is scheduled for release on July 29th, 2009. For more details, visit the book's MySpace page.