Sheltered #7 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/creator/letters), Johnnie Christmas (art/creator), Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Things are coming apart at the seams as the murderous kids have to deal with outside intervention.

The Review (with SPOILERS): This was another really strong issue for this series.  It starts out kinda slow, but about 2/3 through the issue, it “gets real” when the remaining adult from the last issue is forced to kill one of the murderous little kids as they’re chasing him through the woods.

What I liked about the scene (and the series) is how unflinching it is.  The creators do perform the proper set-up for this fleeing adult: He has seen his friends murdered, he’s running through the snowy woods in the middle of the night (in the middle of nowhere), he’s been shot in the leg, and he STILL has three kids with guns chasing him.  So, the comic does go to great lengths to demonstrate that he really has no choice but to fight back and they demonstrate his remorse afterwards – even though he knew he had no choice.  But, the way they depict the shooting of a kid is pretty blunt.

The whole scene is surreal.  One moment they’re just kids running through the woods after an adult; they are KIDS and don’t really understand life and death and consequences.  They’re chasing the adult just because that’s what the other kids are doing.  The next moment one of these kids is shot through the chest- dying – and the other kids really don’t know what to do.  Their only prior experience with injury has been when friends skin their knees and you call for a parent, except they cannot do that because they killed all the parents.  Now they’re just kids lost in the forest who need help….but can’t get any help.

Sheltered #6 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/letters), Johnnie Christmas (art), Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Adults from the outside world appear at the secluded compound.

Review (with SPOILERS): This was a pretty solid issue.  It does a lot of things well, but has some problems that we’ll get to in a minute.

On the good side of the ledger, we get to see a fully fleshed-out backstory on the adults who had arrived at the compound at the end of issue #5.  If you’ll remember, at the end of that issue, a truck with adults showed up to disturb Lucas’ little Children of the Corn scene.  It was a really good cliffhanger because we didn’t know how it would affect Lucas’ plans.  Were these armed thugs showing up?  Other preppers?  Family members of some of the parents who Lucas had killed?

Well, it turns out that this guy is nothing but a dude delivering some second hand solar panels to the compound to make a few bucks.  Where I thought this issue was effective was in just how well it illustrated this delivery guy’s situation.  I mean, he’s hustling and scrambling to act as a kinda sales agent for used solar panels!  They’re not even his solar panels.  He isn’t like an entrepreneur who is in the solar panel business; he’s just a guy who knows where there might be some quality used panels and if you give him some money, he’ll track them down for you.  Then through this whole unfortunate sequence of events, he ends up having to deliver the panels himself to make any money on the deal.  It’s a really effective demonstration of how a man can end up with no career, no skills, no capital and be forced to desperately scramble to make money for his family.  The flip side is that it shows the type of trouble you can get yourself into when you’re THAT extended and have to make marginal choices.  Stay in school, kids!

See, if you deliver enough used solar panels to survivalist groups in remote Montana, eventually you’ll roll that natural 20 and hit the nutball group that robs you, takes your stuff, turns out to be a cult, etc.  This guy is just unlucky that he rolled the natural 20 on his first visit and now he’s in deep doo-doo.  He seems like a nice guy – family and all that – but now he’s walked into Lucas’ nuthouse and he’ll have to pay the price.  What’s ironic is that this guy was probably on the phone with his wife 30 minutes earlier saying, “I’m almost done with this trip.  It took 8 hours to drive here, but I just have to drop off the panels and leave.”  He was probably already planning what he would do with the money.  Little did he know that what he perceived as the END of his adventure was really just the BEGINNING.

Sheltered #5 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (creator/writer/letters), Johnnie Christmas (creator/illustrator) and Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Lucas continues to tighten his grip on the children, but the outside world may show up and cause problems.

Review (with SPOILERS): This is a really strong series. I can’t believe that it isn’t getting a little more chatter because it’s almost everything that I want a “pre-apocalypse” story to be.  Seriously, check the series out.  It’s even a $2.99 book and the trade is coming out in the next month or so.

One great thing about Sheltered is how rapidly it rips through the story.  We’re only on the fifth issue and so much has already happened.  We saw the kids kill their parents.  We saw the two girls suspect that something fishy was going on and end up getting locked in the underground bunker.  We’ve seen Lucas (the leader) start to exhibit all sorts of creepy “cult leader” vibes.  We’ve seen Lucas start to murder other kids who dissent.  All in the first four issues!

Thematically, Sheltered shares some DNA with a series like The Walking Dead.  Sure….there are no zombies in Sheltered, but the basic stories are similar.  TWD has (unfortunately) settled into a really slow storytelling tempo where storylines drag along for a year or more.  Even though TWD can still bring the noise once or twice per year, I honestly prefer the faster paced tempo of a story like Sheltered.  I guess there is a concern about “running out of story”, but these sorts of post-apocalyptic tales can really run forever if the writers are clever.  Just keep changing the setting and giving the characters new events to react to.

Sheltered #4 – Review

By: Ed Brisson (writer/letters), Johnnie Christmas (art) and Shari Chankhamma (colors)

The Story: Lukas starts to deal with dissenters in his group.

Review (with SPOILERS): This is a pretty good series.  If you haven’t been following it, the basic set-up is that we’re introduced to a group of families preparing for the Shit hits the fan moment.  You know…Preppers…  These families have bought land in the middle of nowhere in rural Montana/Idaho and are preparing for the worst: building shelters, stockpiling food, guns, etc.  The first issue shows the children of the preppers turn on their parents and murder them.  Since then we’ve watched as the kids consolidate under the leadership of a teenager named Lukas.

I originally thought this might be a comic series about the dangers of prepping.  I mean, if your children grow up hearing you talking about the apocalypse and see you stockpiling weapons and survival supplies, that might warp them a bit; maybe as the adults are seeing the federal government as a threat to their liberty, the children start to see their parents in the same light.  But, Sheltered really hasn’t turned out that way at all.