Long Cold Winter #1: A Bright, Suffocating Future

Long Cold Winter #1 takes place in a world that humanity has ruined. But ecological dystopia need not be ugly as the art and coloring in this issue proves.

Earth’s air is unbreathable in the future. Only the very wealthy can afford microchips manufactured by Air Co. that will infuse the user with oxygen. This is the world of Long Cold Winter #1. Peace Dog has a price on his head, but all he wants to do when the issue opens is enjoy some sushi. He’s attacked by would-be bounty hunters who he dispatches quickly. Shortly after, Peace Dog’s sushi experience is interrupted again–this time by a robot named The Kid. He is on his way to a free community of robots called Hope Land and needs Peace Dog’s help to get there.

Long Cold Winter #1’s visuals are the issue’s most striking component. The comic doesn’t specify that the story takes place in an industrial wasteland beyond Air Co.’s ecologically bad actions, but that’s certainly the implication. Cardoselli’s art feeds into this vibe. Everything looks used with lines and cracks and bits of detritus on display in virtually every panel. This world is beat up.

That same quality extends to main characters Peace Dog and The Kid. Like the environment, they are rugged, lined and uneven in presentation. Peace Dog’s change of heart to help The Kid happens fast insofar as Long Cold Winter #1’s dialogue is concerned, but given the environment he lives in, it’s easy to understand his choice.

Coloring in Long Cold Winter #1 appears to contrast the used up world Cardoselli creates. Scaramella’s choices create a vivid world where even the shadows seem bright. Judging purely from Scaramella’s coloring, this used up world still feels very much alive. But it’s that very duality that makes the visuals work so well.

Despite how colorful Scaramella makes Long Cold Winter #1, there is no getting around the harsh world Cardoselli has drawn. The feeling is one of putting a fresh coat of paint on a rusted out car. This push and pull visual setting is particularly noteworthy when Peace Dog and The Kid pass an Air Co. building. The company’s brand is bright pink. A smiling yellow sun rises out of some clouds. A multicolored rainbow reaches toward the sky. Bright green letters spell out the company’s motto. This building is seemingly the brightest, happiest component of Long Cold Winter #1’s world. Yet the reader already knows that Air Co. is a significant contributor to the rundown state of the world.

The knowledge that Air Co. is a horrible corporation comes via a few third person caption boxes that provide a vague background. The narration gives the reader an easy, if not particularly delicate way into the world. And it’s necessary because Perillo provides very little context in the action sequence that opens the issue.

Long Cold Winter #1’s story is relatively straightforward. It essentially takes the form of a quest with Peace Dog escorting The Kid to a kind of promised land. Perillo drops little bits of characterization in dialogue, but the two main characters remain largely blank slates through this first issue. Most of the dialogue establishes the plot and adds flavor to the environmentally ruined world it takes place in. There isn’t a lot to this first issue. From a story and character point of view, it’s a kind of minimum down payment on what is hopefully a distinct story.

Beaudoin adds dialogue bubbles where he wants on the page courtesy of how he connects them to the characters. Rather than any kind of large pointer extending from the bubbles, Beaudoin merely draws a thin line, straight or squiggly. The dialogue bubbles float on the page, always in the least obtrusive part and never interfering with or distracting from the art.