"Squarriors" issue #1
Genre: Allegorical Dystopian Graphic Novel
Length: 32 pages per issue / 4 parts
Publisher: Devil's Due Entertainment
My 9 Reader Hot-Button Considerations:
1. World's Immersion:
Read the lit sign on the bar/eatery that opens up page 1 in rural Illinois: 'Good Friends, Good Times,' burnt-out to simply "End Times." When we walk inside that bar and witness what happens there, the unsettling understanding becomes: resources are scarce, and the strong shall take them; fast-forwarding a decade later, we are ejected from lingering human out-posts and immersed directly into the weeds. This world is a sprawling microcosm of conflict on the earthy level, down in the senses, literally, animals scrapping for survival. This microcosm, to the animal denizens of this world, has its own parameters, delineated from the chaos into an order of warring tribes: Squirrel-Warrior / 'Tin Kin' Tribe, the Cat 'Amoni,' the 'Maw,' the 'Sursha'...merely introduced, yet to be fully revealed. We follow the Tin Kin into their compound / shelter, discovering the apt origin of their tribe's handle. The kinship is housed inside the tin hide of a train-wreck, which clearly jumped the rails, lying in a ruined heap; this is a visual metaphor for the crash of old-world order, swallowed up by the wild...
2. Character/Icons:
KING: The Alpha, supreme clan leader. His is a sober presence, balanced, in considering all the options of his tribe's way onward.
PASHA: Brother to Meo, and reputable to the Tin Kin as a peerless scout. Pasha's plight is a catalyst, as shown in issue #1, galvanizing the tribe toward risking and ranging beyond their shelter.
CHEEKS: The commander of the clan's militia is hardened because he has to be. Physically a giant to his peers, he yet possesses a deep-heart concern for the smallest of his Tin Kin, and mentors upholding the Code of Will, over that of Might.
RUSTLE: From 'the other side of the tracks,' this vicious Squarrior represents the Code of Might, making him a savage companion defector in the Tin Kin ranks. This also grants Rustle a compelling learning curve, in adopting the Code of Will to cultivate or gentle his fury.
ELI: The fox allies with the Tin Kin, although he has ties with a defector known as Redcoat. One wonders if he yet maintains his contacts on the outside. Eli is coolly intellectual, with an underlying feral quality just below his calm surface.
MEO: An officer, and Pasha's brother. He is motivated by the survival of the tribe, with a protective nature toward Pasha...this bond will test his mettle in the discoveries to come.
TREE JUMP: An officer. He has a clear understanding of the tribes and the quality of the Tin Kin's chances, in engaging the various forces of their world. He also has little faith in extending his clan's paws in cooperation...expecting a bite or oblivion in return.
3: Structural Appointments:
It is somewhat difficult to write about the structure as a whole, given that I do not know where the next 3 issues will take the arc. Going off of the issue I have, I perceive 'departure.' This issue culminates with the Tin Kin decisions to brave forward, from their dwindling storehouses, through a journey into unknown territories. We are now set-up to expand into the world of Squarriors.
I see the mythic journey at work, here, where our heroes will travel into darkening times and dangers, will become separated and forced to face individual adversity, and by the time we reach issue #4, there will be reunion, the new state of being, or what their world will have come to. The mystery in what this vision will culminate with, who will come out alive, or whether their Code of Will shall survive "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," makes for a tantalizing expectation for those future issues to arrive.
The structure of issue #1 is elegant in design, covering a maximum of characterization and information, inside of relatively few pages. The effect is like a command to the Reader, that one is being immersed into a fully-realized world construction...and to follow, through an undeniably fresh and compelling story vision.
4. "Visuality,"/Sensory Appeals:
Nothing has been dialed in, here; the artist, Ashley Witter, is committed, and her level of visual clarity on these pages, verges on animation. Each panel is an individual painting, with deep, full colors, and the backdrops are carefully selected in tonality to depict the drama's current, elemental mood. An example of what I mean, is the muddy, light-dwindling sunset, behind the Tin Kin as they discuss imminent war.
I am drawn to the shadow and glimmer of animal eyes, in Ashley's work. One will notice the painstaking details of how light and emotion plays, with shade or opaqueness. Flecks of light, matting of fur, or quality of sparsely ragged clothing, fulfills a palette of fascinating textures.
One cannot dismiss the gravity and seriousness of SQUARRIORS, in major part, because Ashley Witter's professional artwork in support of Ash Maczko's story, is as good as any graphic novel I have ever seen, Marvel comics or graphic novels, inclusive. One can see the fully-realized, animated film, leaping like tree-jumping Tin Kin off these richly illustrated pages.
5. Thematic/Mythic Appeals:
Survival-of-the-fittest in the animal world, and the human world, turns out to be parallel. The strong prey on the weaker, and the willful fight tenaciously against overwhelming odds. SQUARRIORS connects with Readers through the allegorical human struggle for shelter and sustenance, in a crashing world. Like the Tin Kin, we fear venturing into the unknown, facing potentially hostile reception, and the threat of running out of resources. The universal cost: Death or Loss.
Stoicism comes to mind, although feelings of sorrow and regret do reflect in our heroes. The Tin Kin are stoic in their resolve to face all obstacles to their survival. They steel themselves to persist against adversity, and to range out from their comfort-zone, to communicate with adversarial tribes. They do not simply flee, as one might expect squirrels to scurry away and do. Anyone who has ever seen a squirrel turn around and get their back up, knows, that they have fight in them. The Squarriors train with their weapons, to smack down the snouts of any predatory opposition calling them on.
There is brief mention of the The Feeding Camps, and a single image of victimized squirrels trapped in ramshackle conditions, overseen by a looming cat. The Nazi death-camps are subliminally evoked in this vision of despair. We have this looming threat, over the heads of the Squarriors' decision to venture forth and risk the wilderness. Through animal allegory, we are able to explore the harsher story of our own brutal world history, through a once-removed, passion play.
A quest for meaning, shows up in the Tin Kin's perceptions of 'what came before us'...a universal human preoccupation. There is visual reference to 'Creators,' which in shadowy representation, appear to be shelter-seeking humans. Whether because Creators built the train-wreck and other such shelters around their world, or because Creators simply 'came before,' and then disappeared, humans appear to be cast in the history of Tin Kin thought, as mythical prime-movers or original mysteries.
The Tin Kin live by the Code of Will which, in our introductory piece of the viewpoint, is inclusive of others, peaceful and tolerant. Based on their combat training, I also take it that the Code of Will upholds defensive strength through adversity, or stoicism. Each tribe lives by its own code, just as all tribes do, in our own world. Our heroes uphold this central philosophy which likely bonds them to the Reader; it is a compassionate character stance of ethical, moral strength.
6. Story-Flow:
SQUARRIORS is constructed with a nimble, story-telling economy. In the first issue's 32 pages, we are placed in and understand the state of the world we are reading about, introduced to a full cast of characters and their adversarial counterparts, as well as the series' mythological shape, and are yet left, with awareness of mysteries compelling us to read further. Impressive and highly readable, issue #1 powerfully sets up the world and its scope of elements.
7. Innovation/Genre-Blend:
The cocktail here, is high-fantasy...animal allegorical dystopia...and given the 'disaster' time-reference of 1996, a parallel reality of unknown, end-time events, is inferred; the news a decade earlier, cites a loss of infrastructural support. We simply don't know what cataclysm has occurred, at this point in issue #1, but human civilization appears to have 'blown away.' This subtly innovative twist on the state of the world, allows the writer to imagine a savage wilderness with its own rules.
What I enjoy about this genre creation, is that it is not derivative of current comic book trends, but has its own unique pulse. I look for books that swim against the tide, finding creative inlets that jog the jaded mind into recognizing that something fresh has just been tapped. A.M. has cleverly steered us away from what sometimes feels like inevitable Blade Runner syndrome in dystopian visions.
By opting to plunge Readers into the animal world, this once-removed creative tactic, allows the author to talk about our own considerations, such as: societal displacement in war-times, wandering survival, and organization of predators which decimate peaceful cultures. In vivid graphic novel presentation, this apocalyptic vision holds an inescapable impact.
8. Author's Voice/Language:
Ash Maczko's writing approach lends this tale its tone or gravity. This is a very serious world, with life and death consequences, and surviving dire circumstances are expressed in the dialogue dynamics, dependent on precarious choices to be made.
The author is versatile with character voice delineation. Notable voices to my mind: the faux-gentle chiding of a predator Amoni cat as it slays a Squarrior, the terse authority and bluster of Cheeks the Squarrior, and the refined language of Eli the fox.
A.M.'s voice plays out through all of the polarized characters, expressing the full-range of the passion play's conflict. I do not pick up any whiff of 'one voice' and this is because the author understands the viewpoint of his individual components, and how they contribute to the tribal whole.
Finally, within the set-up / extinction of the human 'incident,' our animals here, have somehow attained human-like intelligence, becoming sophisticated on the level of expressing this story-line's higher themes to the nth degree of dramatic complexity.
My own creative partner, the writer Vaysha Hirsch, first introduced me to Ashley Witter's artistic excellence. We admire Ashley's illustrations in Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, graphic novel format. I became curious, and then discovered the inspired SQUARRIORS.
The ambitious size and scope of Ash Maczko's survival story-writing, places SQUARRIORS in peer position with other notable, classic creations, in animal allegorical dystopia: Richard Adams' WATERSHIP DOWN, George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, and also in the graphic novel format, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize winning MAUS, written about The Holocaust. The team-up of Ashley Witter & Ash Maczko reminds me of another creative team in Wendy & Richard Pini of the ELFQUEST graphic novels. Interestingly, the dynamic between "the Ashes" and Pinis mirror each other: the male partners generated the writing, while the female partners generated the artwork.
A key to notice here, is that none of the greats mentioned above, are illustrated so realistically as in A.W.'s work. When one reads as important a piece as Maus, one still comes away with visuals that are more representation, or impressionistic, to tell the otherwise, too grim history. Watership Down has been the hallmark of beautifully illustrated animal struggle, but SQUARRIORS artwork melds visually realistic beauty with a viscerally evoked violence, unparalleled by its predecessors. Animal characters are designed with a clearly humanoid quality, and attack when provoked, with a human capacity for blood-shed. Such mutant connotation, fits in timely, with our own mutating civilization's crash-and-burn times.
Devil's Due Entertainment has produced a beautiful issue #1 for this 4 part mini-series, collector qualitative, and worth ordering and owning in hard-copy. The grounded totality of SQUARRIORS' confidently structured story-telling, melded with high-mark, visual accomplishment, empowers this indie comic ~ which I see, as cut-above graphic novel ~ with the complete attention-grabbing package necessary, to survive and thrive in this cat-eat-squirrel world.
To link-up with the world of SQUARRIORS online and discover this indie comic series further:
http://www.squarriors.com/
Or do as I did, and contact a local comic book store to order your own physical copies today.
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