Extermination

Boom Studios. Written by Simon Spurrier and art by Jeffrey Edwards. Limited Issues 1 - 8.

These comics were a gift from my good pal Allan, aka: The TARDIS Guy. He announces 'I am getting rid of books because I either have them in Trades or I don't want them, so naturally I said 'Yo, I'll take them'.

The first batch I read was from a Studio I hadn't read and a story I didn't know. The two main characters were Nox, a 'Batmanesque' crime fighter, and Red Reaper, his villanous counterpart. Because they are trapped in a blasted dystopia, they must team up to survive giant crabby blob creatures. The story progresses as we reveal more and more. The whole planet was smashed and the roving crab-blobs are feasting on the flesh of the last remaining humans. Backgrounds are introduced in flashbacks as we learn more and more about Nox. The Red Reaper plods along laying the seeds for his arc in the 'current' time.

SPOILERS: The whole premise in this universe was set up during a fight between Nox and Absolute, a very Supermanesque character. The fight is over a woman, a very Catwomanesque villain (You can see a theme?). Nox placed Absolute in a machine that opened up the apocalypse. Nox secretly is powered, something he does not reveal until the last few issues. Of course The Red Reaper has been playing, and murdering, everyone and destroys both vowing to rule the world and re-build it.

Verdict: The art is good but the backgrounds are mainly blasted deserts. The 'villains' are just dressing that hover around and the real bad guys are your protagonists. I enjoyed this book but it certainly didn't have a wow factor or a dynamic that really hooked me. A qualified recommendation.

As a side note, from a collecting point of view, a lot of these books had 8 'Variant' covers (Which Allan failed to buy... I wonder why?), so to collect the 'set' you would have to buy 64 issues. I will touch on this aspect of collecting (I hope).