ADVANCED REVIEW: Dark Spaces: Wildfire #1: We’re On Fire (Spoiler-Free!)

For me, nothing is better in a piece of fiction than when genres blur, and the creators behind a work can ensure that shift is subtle and natural. It’s a tricky technique to pull off, as it requires the story to exist and thrive in separate genres, but also necessitates the connective tissue between them to be just as strong. The more obvious version of this is the mashup, which is just the conjoining of two genres, but they’re both present from the start. There’s no sense of progression or reveal, and when a book rides that wave, it makes it feel unique. A series that captures that shift in genre, while making it obvious in hindsight the change is coming, is Scott Snyder and Hayden Sherman’s new independent series from IDW, Dark Spaces: Wildfire.

The series, written by Snyder with art by Sherman, colors from Ronda Pattison, and lettering from AndWorld Design, follows a group of female inmates collectively known as the 513, who are tasked with fighting fires in California. Snyder’s script drops us immediately into the burning forests, giving exposition about the progression of these wildfires while setting the tone and voice of the book’s protagonist, Ruby Ma Ning. Ma as she’s begrudgingly known to the line, is the only non-prison on the line, willingly leading these women into the danger to try and stop the fires from consuming everything around them. Snyder’s background as a prose writer is abundantly clear in this first issue, as the caption boxes convey a short history lesson, but where another writer would fill the pages with words that block the art, Snyder is more precise, sharing what would amount to paragraphs of information while still giving the art it’s time to shine. At first glance, the story reads like a Hemingway or Steinbeck story, with this woman leading a group to fight these fires, weaving a story of interpersonal drama and rugged women vs nature conflict. 

Instead, Snyder lets the genre make a substantial shift halfway through the issue, thanks to the 513’s newest recruit, a white-collar patsy who took the fall for one of the largest Ponzi schemes in recent history. What starts as a nature/survival tale pivots into a heist/noir story, making the opening narration click into place. In the tradition of stories like Sunset Boulevard, the narration is from the protagonist’s future, and the book is working to catch the audience up to the finale of the story. It’s an innovative way that Snyder is not only able to subvert the expectations of the drama, but his writing tropes. The Best Jackett label of books has done two things well since its inception, which is to allow Snyder to play and be innovative in a way that was missed in his later stories at DC, and to work with a crop of talented collaborators to push him further into new artistic territories. That chance to play and grow is paying dividends based on this issue, which leads the new slate of IDW Originals that Dark Spaces is pioneering.   

Sherman’s art is extremely evocative of recent John Romita Jr. pencils, though with a stronger eye toward detail and a tighter overall style of linework. The detail on every page is astonishing, and every panel, no matter the size or subject, just begs for the reader to pore over. Sherman’s art is breathtaking from the first page, and there’s something horrifyingly beautiful in the depictions of the forest burning on the page. The art and color capture that draw of watching a fire, the hypnotic crackling and warmth even as the notion of its destructive tendency sits at the back of the mind. Paired with Sherman’s gorgeous panel composition, which shines in the execution of various splash pages, the book stuns with its rendering of the burning lands. 

The standout page(s) of this issue is towards the end of the book, and is a splash that details Ma’s life outside of the fire fighting, and starts as these long panels slowly shrink and cascade into little blips before the crease of the book absorbs them. The copy of this issue read for the review was digital so, the crease is non-existent, but just imagining what the splash would look like in a print edition is tempting. It’s the first time in a long time that this reviewer has seen an innovative way to play with that dead space living in the crease. But even as those panels shrink and blend into one another, the level of detail that Sherman infuses into them is just shocking. Some panels tell a more cohesive and emotionally enthralling story than entire books can manage. 

But it’s not just the finite details that Sherman thrives at, immediately following that splash with a wide cinematic shot of the fires raging in the forest, with only a few panels interrupting the scene to highlight how small these women are compared to the raging inferno. Sherman’s stunning art, which gives less detail but still paints a compelling picture of the danger works in tandem with Pattison’s haunting palette to sell the heat and danger of this world. The yellow and orange hues work as both the light source and subject of the splash, as well as large sections of the book while contrasting with the coot blacks of the ground. That orange bleeds into the 513’s uniforms, and the book feels alive when those tones are illuminating the page. The contrast is clear when the script cuts to Ma’s world outside the fires, bathing her in cool blues and pinks that feel static and flat when compared to the intoxicating heat of the palette.