Mara #1 – Review

By: Brian Wood (writer), Ming Doyle (art) & Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: In the future, a young woman finds stardom as a professional athlete….but perhaps there is a secret to her success.

Review (with a minor SPOILER): Let’s hand it to Brian Wood for coming up with different sorts of futures than we often see in comics – or fiction in general.  While I really do enjoy stories like The Walking Dead or The Road where you are forced to consider things like the ethics of cannibalism, those stories do all have a similar vibe to them.  So, it’s nice to see something different.  The world that Wood introduces us to in Mara #1 is said to be “war-obsessed”, but it is obsessed in the way of “I like to watch FoxNews reports on drone strikes in Pakistan.” Surely there are parts of this future world that are war-ravaged, but we don’t see them in this issue.  Everything is spiffy and clean, and while it is slightly futuristic, it isn’t unrecognizable compared to the present day.