Broken Frontier

Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber, strange beasts for sure amongst those strangest of beasts: comic creators. Both are mainstream creators (though maybe Lieber a bit less than Parker) but both are also strong independent creators. Carving out a niche for themselves in the dangerous world of creator controlled comics, they found a dwelling at Image Comics for their latest venture Underground.

Park Ranger and avid caver Wesley Fischer is on a one-woman mission to stop Stillwater Cave from being turned into a tourist trap, but public opinion is not on her side. When locals begin blasting in the cave, Wes and a fellow ranger investigate – and a confrontation spirals into a deadly chase deep under the Kentucky mountains!

Jeff Parker immediately lays the groundwork for the setting and the characters from page 1 without forcing expository dialogue on Steve Lieber's fluid drawings. He sets up the ethical dilemmas - business vs. conservation -  and the moral dilemmas - stability vs. emotional challenge - like it's no big thing. He throws the bait and hooks the reader from the first pages in and just keeps on reeling. That's Parker's major strength here and his natural sounding dialogue and banter ... and his feeling for setting a good scene ... and turning his protagonists into real people with not always clear emotions ... and ... aah, he's just that good!

Comrade-in-arms and instigator of the high concept, Steve Lieber is just as excellent on the art front though. His brushwork is delicate and suggestive where it needs to be. Characters stand out from the background, firmly delineated while less important aspects are rendered with more fluid lines and abstract. All people, even the side-characters, are given a distinctive look, making them feel like real people instead of voice-boxes for background chatter. Lieber's design for the female protagonist Wesley Fischer is immediately likable but also shows an edge in her brows and facial expressions. Fellow ranger Seth Ridge is not your standard pretty boy but shows Cherokee tracings and over-thirty features. Lieber handles it all perfectly.  For the cave scenes, he even uses a more delicate line with more crosshatching and spotted blacks while keeping his delineated lines for the characters, further alienating the humans from the cave environment, almost like making a statement that they don't belong in this other world of darkness and unique ecosystems.

Not to be underestimated is also his handling of the page and the flow of panels. Rarely flashy, Lieber tells a good tale at a good pace. He uses neat storytelling tricks like shrinking the panels and the panel grid when someone enters the cave. Or leaving out panel borders while driving through Kentucky country enhancing the openness of the outside. Everything is laid out perfectly and easy to follow without becoming repetitive. It's all in the details.

Ron Chan handles the colours here and he makes some interesting choices, differentiating between settings by switching his colour methods. The dream sequence has a muted overtone, the daylight world features bright sunny colours befitting the outback location and the scenes in the cave have an edgy blocky style all in reds. Especially the colouring for the cave makes it feel otherworldly and menacing and the cave truly becomes a character standing on its own. In combination with Lieber's crosshatching on the cave, it truly gives rise to the title of the comic: Underground.

Jeff Parker's and Steve Lieber's Underground is a high concept action adventure comic that reeks of Seventies disaster movies. It sucks you in from the first page as the creators focus on the small dramas of the world and of the characters and succeed in planting a spiral of events that will lead the protagonists into an otherworldly hell. Highly recommended and for more information, visit the promotional site at www.undergroundthecomic.com