New West #1by Patti MartinsonReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Publisher
Credits Grade: 7 Set in the future where California and other parts of the west coast are underwater because of a Quake, New West starts out with a man and a woman on their way to Los Alamos with a stranger they picked up along the way. The couple are young and kind of punk-looking, while the other man is a cowboy who once served as a soldier.They arrive in Los Alamos and head for a bar for off-duty soldiers. Cowboy starts to get well on his way to being drunk and picking a fight with other patrons of the bar, with his companions looking on with amusement. I initially read parts of New West when it was published in the string series of comics. I said then this felt like a larger narrative and I'm glad to see it in a stand-alone comic format. The only name given is Paz, the male half of the punk-looking couple. The names of the cowboy and woman are never really given, but it doesn't affect the comic much. The narrative is pretty clear that this is a man on a mission with a couple of potential side-kicks. The western theme is present not only with the look of the Cowboy guy, but the classic riding into town montage and the familiar saloon fight. What keeps this a bit novel to me is the fact that this is sort of a post-apocalyptic society and the humor, which is something that wasn't really hinted at the beginning. At the beginning, I thought the Cowboy was a lot older and it is not until the saloon fight starts that we see he is as young as the couple he is traveling with. The scene where he gets drunker and drunker was funny. Even the fight itself had some humor to it and I totally didn't expect it to end the way it did. The artwork, like the society it illustrates, is a bit on the ramshackle side, but it is never confusing and the level of detail is pretty impressive. The Cowboy was the most fleshed-out character in this first issue, and I can only hope that we learn more about the other two as well, since here they were mostly bystanders to whatever the Cowboy did. A pretty promising start. I'm interested in these characters and in seeing and learning more about them and their adventures. Written: February 7, 2010
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