Here at First Comics News, we get a pile of digital review comics each week and I get to plough through them to see what catches my eye and what doesn’t. Mostly I like to talk about first issues or follow up on something I already covered. So that eliminates a bunch of the comics but even then, there is usually a decent handful to choose from. Lately, it’s been a bit hard to find a gem in there that really excited me or hasn’t been already covered to death.
Freeze from Image Comics / Top Cow Productions looked good. Nice cover with a simple design which was eye-catching enough to warrant a closer look. I was not disappointed by what i found inside. Freeze has an interesting concept and definitely fit my main criteria for a first issue … make me want to read more. One of the answers to the lifelong question I’ve been asked, “If you had superpowers, what would they be?” Freezing time is high up there.
“The entire human population is frozen by a mysterious global event… all except Ray, and only he has the power to unfreeze them. Now with the fate of the world in his hands, he must figure out what is going on, how to set things right again, and answer the question: does everyone deserve to be saved?”
I’m a bit tired of the flashback and flash forward storytelling method. Maybe it’s Lost, Arrow or some other TV show that just wore me down. So when Freeze did this in the first few pages I actually moaned out loud. I don’t know if this will be the case moving forward or was this just for the first issue, and it is not something intrinsically the fault of writer Dan Wickline … it might just be me. Fortunately, Dan doesn’t jump back and forth, back and forth in the timeline.
The issue starts with a bunch of masked “gunmen” walking through a school. Everyone is frozen except another armed group closing on their position. They find a particular person, unfreeze her with a touch and make their escape in a rooftop helicopter gunfight scene. Flashback to Ray, a corporate computer guy that accidentally gives himself a shock and finds himself amongst a world of frozen people. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the two groups in the first part of the comic are the result of two different factions forming out of the people that Ray subsequently unfreezes with a touch competing with conflicting agendas in this new global status quo.
Art by Phillip Sevy is nice. A realistic style that reflects his winning the Top Cow Talent Hunt back in 2013. A few panels look like they could have been tightened up with a solid inker but I get the impression this was a style choice not a question of skill or talent. Colours were also handled by Phillip and look fine. I was just not blown away by Phillips art nor was I turned off by it either. Lettered by Troy Peteri and I’m just running out of ways to say the same thing about letterers. You don’t notice good lettering, you only really notice when it is bad. Troy does a nice, clean and professional job on the letters.
Yeah … I want to know what happens next. I want to know what is this event that froze everyone. I want to know why Ray is the only one (so far) that can “unfreeze” people with a touch. I want to know what happened that splintered Ray’s group as it grows and what exactly are the agendas. Are there more groups? This comic is worth a pickup if you see it on the rack at your Local Comic Shop and the potential is there for this to be an interesting series
Issue: Freeze #1 | Publisher: Image Comics / Top Cow Productions
Writer: Dan Wickline | Artist: Phillip Sevy
Lettering: Troy Peteri
Price: $3.99 – 32 pages
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