Reviewed By Taylor Hoffman // @taylorcheckerss

“Pisces” #1 is an ambitious and ambiguous start to a body-horror science-fiction series brought to us by the new powerhouse team Kurtis J. Wiebe (Rat Queens) and Johnnie Christmas (Sheltered). Lovers of Wiebe’s ‘Green Wake’ must add this to their pull immediately so this series doesn’t suffer the same fate, and there’s no doubt that it will draw in fans across several off-kilter genres. This is a cerebral story centered around a man’s life who has been to war, to space, and back again. Wiebe and Christmas have promised David Cronenberg inspired body horror and this first issue only shows us a preview of what horrors await.

Story By: Kurtis J. Wiebe

Art By: Johnnie Christmas

Colors By: Tamra Bonvillain

Publisher: Image Comics

Price: $3.50

Release Date: 4/29/15

The book opens with Dillion Carpenter driving drunk while generic whiskey drips from the bottle in the passenger seat. His face is already bloody and haphazardly bandaged, hands tight on the wheel as he approaches an emergency room. He stops a second too late and, thud-crash, hits a parked ambulance. It’s late and raining hard, and the man in shadows emerges from behind the shattered windows of the driver’s seat and stumbles into the main lobby of the ER with blood dripping off him. Why? Well, there’s no spoilers in saying that we still don’t know, but it’s one hell of a way to introduce the main character. Soon, we’re in Vietnam during Dillion’s younger years serving as a pilot. Things, as they must, go poorly, and we’re set to a different time. Each new time period establishes this story as very grounded in reality, but as the solicits say, he’ll eventually be going into space on a secret mission for NASA. Well, this is the story of how and why this guy is important.

Truly, there’s none of the Scanners vibe present, but there’s an equally chilling horror of reoccurring trauma bubbling. Obviously, Dillion’s got some issues to work out and the abyss of space keeps whispering to him. Wiebe’s tackling some heavy topics in this story, including war veteran PTSD as a way of both story-telling and character development. We’re putting pieces together as we go along even while completely displaced from any distinct timeline. Wiebe puts a lot of heart into his writing, and it’s no doubt that Dillion’s story will be told truthfully, guts and all.

Johnnie Christmas’ art on Sheltered is fantastic, and his talent really shines on this new project. The paneling is very deliberately laid out for a story that is made up of jarring memories. Christmas uses his space wisely by creating juxtaposition between the vastnesses of space and other unfamiliar territory in which, probably, Dillion doesn’t belong. Christmas’ silent story-telling in a few pages is very Watchmen-esque in its nine-panel structure. The gutters run through equally important memories that are in no particular order and any sequence works. The facial expression work for these characters is superb and depicts a range of emotions from pity to disgust naturally. Tamra Bonvillain’s (Wayward) coloring brings everything together with a constant awareness of the tone of the story at every point and the color palette to match. All together, the story’s timeline is more defined, but not too rigidly that it takes the wandering away.

It’s both exciting and awfully dreadful to feel lost, and its in this dark disconnect that Pisces thrives. The lack of understanding isn’t unsatisfying; it just leaves you hungry for more details in the second issue. There’s an abyss waiting Dillion and plenty of darkness in store for the rest of the series.