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The Light #1 and #2

By Dan Horn
March 18, 2010 - 13:31

The Light #1

Advance Review (available 4/14/2010)

When I read the premise of The Light by writer Nathan Edmondson (OLYMPUS) and artist Brett Weldele (SURROGATES), I sort of chuckled to myself. People dying from looking into electric lights because of a virus? It sounded absurd, but it had the strangely banal appeal of a Stephen King novel. Upon reading I found that the story’s simple postulate was eerily affective. Technology is all around us. As Edmondson states in his pitch for The Light, we live under the omnipresence of a globe spanning grid of interconnectivity. We have no consent to whether we live inside this grid of energy or not, nor do we have a means of escaping it, as it has the ability to reach to the hearts of the deepest jungles and to cross the highest mountain ranges.

So, what happens when electric light turns everyone who looks at it into a human Roman candle? In The Light, we see Coyle, an abusive alcoholic recently fired from a job as a welder, navigating through a treacherous Oregon cityscape full of dangerous lights, exploding civilians, and dive-bombing airliners. Protected only by his welding glasses and accompanied by his blindfolded adolescent daughter, Coyle makes a daring attempt to reach the safety of darkness at the outskirts of the city.

Edmondson turns any presupposition we have about light being synonymous with safety on its head, and Weldele’s beautiful artwork brilliantly portrays every glint, glare, and glow as something cold, harsh, and menacing. Full of powerful scenes of humanity pushed to its brink and portraying an excellent father-daughter dynamic, The Light is a delightfully offbeat spin on apocalyptic storytelling norms.

That being said, each issue won’t give you much to read, the writing tending to lean toward succinct. It’s a drop in the pail compared to the more eloquent and memorable material that is currently published. The Light does compensate for the lack of verbosity, though, with some fantastically bleak visuals reminiscent of 30 Days of Night.

If you’re a fan of end-of-the-world survival bravado or of interesting twists on the commonplace, The Light is a fantastic piece that will whet your appetite for more. Issue #1 of 5 is available April 14, 2010.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12