Assorted Crisis Events #1
Chad Burdette
Recap
Time is having a crisis. Mingling in the red-light district, you can find actual cavemen, medieval knights, and cyborg soldiers on leave from World War IV. Victorian debutantes amble their way into cell phone stores, confused and bewildered (what is a data plan?). On their way to work, bleary-eyed commuters get trapped in time-loops, assaulted by alternate-reality versions of themselves, and try to avoid post-apocalyptic wastelands. And LOOK: the 3:15 bus just took a wrong turn... into the neolithic era.
Rising stars Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki and Eisner-winners Jordie Bellaire and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou are proud to present Assorted Crisis Events, an ongoing, zig-zagging anthology series about the compromised clicks of our clocks-full of one-shot stories both beautiful and ugly, tragic and redemptive, surreal and somehow all too familiar.
Review
Assorted Crisis Events #1 is the first installment of the new anthology series from Image Comics that explores what the average person might experience in a universe that is continually experiencing some sort of crisis event.
In this issue, readers are introduced to Ashley, who is searching for her parents and trying to get her clock, the only memento she has of them, fixed which is a task in and of itself. In Ashley’s world, nothing is constant except the temporal abnormalities and changing of reality. Camp leans into the vast array of tropes often portrayed across the comic book genres. There is also a good balance between the exposition being told through dialouge and the artwork by Zawadzki. There are many threads that are weaved together to flesh out this strange world such as the movies being filmed outside her apartment, the constant temporal alerts she receives on her phone, to the various people she meets as she tries to make sense of the world she lives in.
The story gives Zawadzki an opportunity to draw zombies, mecha-robots, and more as Ashley journeys through the city. He also uses a variety of panel layouts, splash pages with maximum efficiency, even telling stories in the background, the best being the couple in the bar where Ashley is getting drunk during happy hours. Bellaire’s colors are masterful as ever.
Final Thoughts
Assorted Crisis Events #1 is a strong opening shot to this new anthology series, which looks to do for the Crisis Event genre what Ice Cream Man did for horror comics.
Assorted Crisis Events #1: When Things Go Timey Wimey Wibbly Wobbly
- Writing - 10/1010/10
- Storyline - 10/1010/10
- Art - 10/1010/10
- Color - 10/1010/10
- Cover Art - 10/1010/10
