Extermination #1-3 Review

Introduction:

The Earth is a wasteland. Ravaged by an alien invasion, the only people left to defend our world are divided upon two sides of the fence – the supervillains that looked to rule and the superheroes who fought them day in and day out. The story focuses upon one hero, Nox, a martial arts expert and master detective and one villain, The Red Reaper, a technowizard with no morals. Can this duo survive against the alien invasion and at the same time survive each other?

Vitals

Title: Extermination #1-3
Creator: Matt Gagnon
Writer: Simon Spurrier
Artist: Jeffrey Edwards (V Ken Marion Issue 3)
Colors: Blond (Darrin Moore, Vladimir Popov, and John Charles Issue 3)
Letters: Ed Dukeshire
Content: Extermination is for mature readers and contains graphic violence, language, horror, and gore.
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Cost: $3.99

Story:

The story of Extermination is just that, the absolute destruction of the human race. The only ones left to fight the unstoppable alien horde are a few heroes and villains. The two the story centers on is Nox, a hero, and The Red Reaper, his archenemy. This duo has been on the run and working together since the invasion began.

The team has been hard pressed at every turn. Psychic scouts searching for fear and dread lure in larger beasts to finish off their prey. The remains of humanity they find are shell shocked and willing to go to great lengths to survive.

Hero Nox finds out some interesting news though. The greatest hero of the earth, The Absolute, is alive and could be the key to stopping this invasion. He sets of immediately, at great complaint from Reaper, and the two must fight against an entire alien invasion and perhaps each other to accomplish their task.

Review:

I thoroughly enjoyed the premise of this comic. It’s kind of an odd couple meets post-apocalyptic meets road trip adventure, with a dash of high octane combat mixed in. The banter the two have was fun to read and you got a real feel for their disdain at not just working with each other, but needing each other to survive.

From the art side of things, there were things that I enjoyed, and some things I found lacking. I felt the aliens and backgrounds were quite well done. In combination with the coloring they looked very horrific and otherworldly. The gruesome aspects were also something, while enjoy might be the wrong word, more appreciate I guess is a better one. There was one scene in issue two that took my breath away.

My biggest letdown would have to be the faces of the characters. When supered up and covered, things were fine, but many of the emotions and facial features seemed a bit off. There were also some proportions that also didn’t fit well.

One other interesting aspect was the play on some of the world’s most iconic heroes. There is an obvious nod to the relationship between Superman and Batman, with the writers take on it being vastly different from the DC Comics version. I always like seeing these kinds of alternate reality versions of popular characters with this version is much darker than its DC counterpart and I look forward to seeing how it pans out.

Conclusion:

I think this series has a lot going for it in its storyline and universe. It was fun to see how the hero and villain were influencing each other for better or worse and I really liked the direction the series was heading. Unfortunately some aspects of the art were a letdown for me and made the series look a little less professional than desired. I’m still interested though in seeing where the series goes as the strengths of the series outweighs its weaknesses.