Wild's End #1
- Writer:
- Dan Abnett
- Artist:
- I.N.J. Culbard
- Letterer:
- I.N.J. Culbard
- Cover Artist:
- I.N.J. Culbard
- Publisher:
- Boom! Studios
- Price:
- $4.99
- Release Date:
- 2023-06-21
- Colorist:
- I.N.J. Culbard
Boom! Studios presents Wild's End #1, a six-part limited series that starts off as a kitchen-sink drama set in a rustic, anthropomorphic world. Written by Dan Abnett, one of 2000 AD and Warhammer 40K's most prolific writers, with art, colors and letters by longtime Brink and The New Deadwardians collaborator I. N. J. Culbard. As life trundles on post-war in Gullstone Harbor, mysterious events threaten to change the small coastal town forever.
Wild's End #1 begins with a rag-tag group of sailors preparing to depart on a regular fishing expedition. The disparate but intertwined crew are joined by the captain’s grandson, infamous tearaway Edmund, whose dreadful reputation is only made more dismal by his lack of fishing skills. At sea, the crew witness a handful of uncanny incidents, which fade in comparison to the strangeness engulfing Gullstone upon their arrival home.
Wild's End #1 is a deeply character-centric first issue, with the plot only beginning at the very end of the comic. Abnett sets fleshing out the characters and relationships at the heart of Wild's End #1, weaving complex and multifaceted relationships that interlock across family, community and livelihood. This is only possible due to the individual robustness of the characters: most of them are deceptively simple, but capable of great range and depth. Loaded with charm, flaws and painful histories, the characters are tightly sketched and profoundly compelling. The level of detail invested into building the characters and their dynamics is only possible due to the slow pacing of Wild's End #1, which works here as a deliberate stylistic and structuring choice. The pacing contributes directly to the tone of the comic, which oozes a quaint slice-of-life feeling that is utterly absorbing and charmingly novel -- and prime to be disrupted by the comic's conclusion, and the rest of the series going forward.
The illustration of Wild's End #1 is very cute and relatively simple across its character design, backgrounds and foregrounds. Culbard works predominantly in thin but sturdy lines, including a small amount of hatching to carve out textural details, that gives the world of Wild’s End #1 a homespun and comforting feel. The visual aspect of the characters feels very well-considered, their design virtually onomatopoeic to each of their distinct personalities, making them feel all the more convincing. Despite the anthropomorphic cast, the characters feel intensely emotionally evocative due to the powerful choices made in terms of facial expressions and anatomy. The backgrounds and foregrounds of the comic are well-composed, if unembellished, and add to the unostentatious feeling that permeates the whole issue.
Culbard's colors follow along similar lines, being overall pretty flat but in such a way that complements the deliberately simplistic style of Wild’s End #1. Although soft and saturated, color pallets will often fall into accenting hues that contrast wonderfully, with some particularly gorgeous panels mostly composed of orangey-pinks and washed-out blues. The colors also do very good work setting the atmosphere of specific scenes, particularly the sickly yellows of below deck as the mood begins to sour. Culbard's letters have a slightly scratchy and whorled feeling to them, amplifying the unvarnished and old-timey feel of Wild’s End #1. The added emphasis through emboldening and italicizing creates an impressive sense of cadence and natural speech rhythms, and the choice to use smaller fonts for quieter voices is a brilliant touch that conveys a little extra about environments and characters.
Wild's End #1 is a deeply lovely comic with no shortage of heart, empathy or complexity. In just the first issue some profoundly touching and interesting character arcs are beginning to develop, as well as conflicts that will form a spine of drama and tension throughout the narrative. The wider mystery afoot is still relatively untouched, but all the small hints point to something intriguing, and potentially a lot more chilling than the first issue has let on.