The New World #1 Review

"True love is a boot in a human face. True love is imposing the will of The State for the benefit of the many. True love, Dear Stella, means allowing the many to benefit from the abuse of the few." -Aleš Kot, The New World

The New World #1 from Image Comics - 

    The old world is dead. In 2037, nuclear weapons exploded over several major cities in what once was The United States of America. Invading forces occupy a large swath of what was once called The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave, bringing the resistance to heel. But not everywhere. California, allied with neighboring states, has managed to not only repel the invaders but to reestablish order - an order in which The State is the unquestionable, absolute authority. To resist is to invite erasure...Yet, there are still those who try to stand against the system. Kirby Miyazaki, a brilliant hacker, is one such dissident. Stella Maris, on the other hand, is the darling of the system - she is a superstar law enforcement officer with her own rebellious streak and granddaughter of the President of California. Predator and prey. Natural enemies...But what happens when they fall head over heels in love? 

   From brilliant scribe, Aleš Kot (Wolf), comes this post-apocalyptic, dystopian love story, The New World. Just a bit reminiscent of George Orwell's seminal work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The New World introduces us to a familiar, but futuristic California that seems to have prospered after the bombs exploded and the invaders came. But things change once we discover that militarized police keep the seemingly happy citizenry in line and that a barbaric voting system is used to decide whether criminals, or other specified targets of the state, will live or be executed for the entertainment of the masses on live television. Enter our protagonists, Stella Maris, and Kirby Miyazaki. Stella is one of The State's top law-enforcement officers, one who always gets her man, but refuses to kill any of them. Kirby is a genius hacker with an individualist streak a mile wide - and he's ready to give the system a little pain for the pain it caused him, and his father, years ago when it snatched his mother away. It seems that Stella's rebellious streak may come from a very similar pain. A series of random events bring them together in a whirlwind of a night of passion...After which Stella discovers that her new love is The State's new Public Enemy No. 1! Wow. This book is top-notch. It's slick, gripping, and balances precariously on the thin line between advocating for personal freedoms, justice, and equality, or simply pushing for anarchy. Kot's world is believable - half desirable, half monstrous - a place where sunny neighborhood barbecues and state-sanctioned, televised murder can take place simultaneously. Order through ruthless force. It's summed up quite nicely in a tongue-in-cheek splash:

    Kot has fleshed his protagonists out perfectly, each with their own beautiful idiosyncracies: Kirby Miyazaki is something of a revolutionary, with shades of an anarchist, yet he is as straight-edge as they come in his personal life, coloring inside all his own self-imposed lines; Stella Maris, an agent of order, lives a life of sex, drugs, and parties, with an upscale apartment that looks like a hazardous waste dump. These two have so much in common, yet are worlds apart. I am very interested to see how their love fares, and how their lives change (or end) when The State tightens its grip. Will Kot give love a win, or will he go the same route as Orwell did in Nineteen Eighty-Four? Either way, it should be one hell of a ride, as Kot never disappoints with his observations and deeply reflective social commentaries. Tradd Moore's (The Strange Talent of Luther Strode) pencils pop - clean, dream-like, psychedelic, and strangely oppressive at times - Moore does some of his best work here, backed by Heather Moore's gorgeous colors. The $4.99 cover price may seem a bit steep, but don't let that deter you. Issue #1 is quite oversized with a hefty page count and the added pleasure of a haunting back-up story by Aaron Stewart-Ahn and Sunando C make the price more than a bargain. The New World is pure, engrossing reading bliss. 

RATING: 10 out of 10. 

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