Broken Frontier

Lincoln Greer is man who has it all... at least on the surface. Two changes in weekend plans will expose the cracks in his life and start him on a potentially deadly path.

One has to applaud Boom! Studios for publishing titles that are outside of the mainstream superhero fare. In fact, many of Boom’s titles do not fit easily into any single genre. Take Hunter’s Moon, for example. It appears, at first, to be a human drama story but by the time you close the cover you realize you may be dealing with something else entirely.

Lincoln Greer is a self-made man. Growing up poor in the mountains, his father taught him to hunt to supplement their food supply. Now a wealthy businessman, Greer has adapted his hunting skills to the corporate world. With a bright future ahead, Greer has a celebratory weekend all planned out but that changes when his girlfriend cancels and his ex-wife needs him to take their son for the weekend. Greer quickly changes direction to turn the weekend into a bonding hunting trip with his son but these changes only show him just how IMperfect his perfect life is. Greer is determined to change his life but outside forces may end up forcing him to change… in a direction he never intended to go!

Writer James L. White comes with a fairly prestigious Hollywood credential and that background shows in his writing. White makes the main character of Lincoln "Linc" Greer eminently likeable, eminently flawed, and eminently human. Greer has made mistakes and it is only now that they are becoming visible to him but most of these mistakes are ones that were made with the best of intentions. Once he becomes aware of the distance and hurt he has unwittingly inflicted on his son he begins to take steps to heal the breach.

While White gives readers a good family story here, the other aspects of this take fall through a bit. For one thing, the family drama takes up so much of this first issue that the entire story becomes set-up and it is only on the last page that readers get a sense of where this is all going. Even at that, the reveal of the true plot of Hunter’s Moon comes as a bit bewildering as readers are left uncertain as to exactly what is going on or where the story may be going. Also, although Greer is a fascinating character, many of the others who appear in the story skate a little too close to stereotype for comfort. There is the overly suspicious, perhaps bigoted, rural sheriff, and Greer’s son has dreams of becoming a rap superstar. I do not doubt that there are many young Africa-American boys who dream of making it big in the music industry but the inclusion of it here feels like it is perpetuating the stereotype that this is all that any African-American youth aspires to.

Dalibor Talajic is not an artist that I am familiar with but his style is nicely moody and atmospheric. Talajic also tends to emphasize the ordinary here. Every person, every object, and every location is grounded, human, and unglamorous – a perfect style for such a human-based story.

Hunter’s Moon #1 offers readers something very different for the stands – a human drama with perhaps a hint of adventure to come. In the end, however, the heavy emphasis on set-up with this issue means that readers will have to wait for issue #2 to get into the meat of the tale. This is one series that may end up reading better once it is collected into trade.