Green Wake #1 – Review

By: Kurtis Wiebe (story), Riley Rossmo (art), Kelly Tindall (letters) & Jade Dodge (edits)

The Story: A detective, noirish murder-mystery set in a purgatory-like environment.

What’s Good: Riley Rossmo (Proof, Cowboy Ninja Viking) has been good for a long time, but this is his best work yet.  This issue has all of his sketchy roughness such that the emotion of the scene just bleeds off the page, but due to the darker subject matter of the story, he’s allowed to go even further with this style (or clean it up less).  The other thing that he’s really adding here is cool architecture.  I’m always a sucker for guys who draw buildings and streetscapes well and Rossmo’s city (?) of Green Wake establishes much of the mood for the story.

Rossmo also does a lot of Templesmith-style digital work on his drawings to punch them up even more.  Like giving a scene a green wash to establish a mood that is only broken by the riot of red from the bleeding man in the street.  It’s just really powerful art and the art alone is worth the price of admission for this issue.

What’s Not So Good: I don’t get the story.  The Green Wake setting seems to be some sort of purgatory where the characters are stuck.  I’m sure that the mystery of “what is Green Wake” will be part of the point to the whole series.  But, this opaqueness really loomed over the entire story (for me) and made it such that I couldn’t concentrate on (and enjoy) the otherwise solid murder-mystery that is on the surface.