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A very unique graphic novel, perfectly executed by Morrison and Quitely.
Morrison's writing on this is sublime. The way the animals talk in a simplified coding language gives a lot of depth to what is being said. Sometimes an animal might utter a few letters, and it will evoke a very real sense of morbidity. It's like you can see the animals forming thoughts and feelings in real-time.
And as always, Frank Quitely blows my mind. As he has done in the past by pulling off a completely silent issue of New X-Men, he does it here again by taking charge of the storytelling. Everything from the visceral, forensic detail of the gore, to the completely functional armor designs, to the emotive expressions given to both animal and human, gives this book a very stark, realistic feel. The panel layouts are, as always, very unique and inventive. Quitely really plays around with creative page compositions like drawing a hail of bullets flying away from the reader's POV, or the sequence where an animal destroys a wall into another panel. But the highlight for me was the 6 pages in the first issue meticulously crammed with 108 panels of CCTV footage, creating a true sense of tension and claustrophobia, before cathartically releasing the tension in a 2-page spread of the animal's escape. It's like you can feel the freedom yourself. I could gush about Quitely's genius all day, but good art is hard to describe.
There's not much to say about Jamie Grant, the colorist and inker. He does a great job setting the mood throughout the different settings in the book. Very cold, sanitary whites and grays in the lab, brightful greens and blues outside, and dark blues and grays for the night portions. Exceptionally good work on coloring the blood and gore, truly doing Quitely's pencils justice.
Overall, this is one of the best examples of what comics can achieve. I would recommend this book to people who haven't read a lot of comics to show them what the medium is capable of. It's a book with a clear vision, that executes said vision flawlessly; and so it gets a 5/5 from me.
Morrison's writing on this is sublime. The way the animals talk in a simplified coding language gives a lot of depth to what is being said. Sometimes an animal might utter a few letters, and it will evoke a very real sense of morbidity. It's like you can see the animals forming thoughts and feelings in real-time.
And as always, Frank Quitely blows my mind. As he has done in the past by pulling off a completely silent issue of New X-Men, he does it here again by taking charge of the storytelling. Everything from the visceral, forensic detail of the gore, to the completely functional armor designs, to the emotive expressions given to both animal and human, gives this book a very stark, realistic feel. The panel layouts are, as always, very unique and inventive. Quitely really plays around with creative page compositions like drawing a hail of bullets flying away from the reader's POV, or the sequence where an animal destroys a wall into another panel. But the highlight for me was the 6 pages in the first issue meticulously crammed with 108 panels of CCTV footage, creating a true sense of tension and claustrophobia, before cathartically releasing the tension in a 2-page spread of the animal's escape. It's like you can feel the freedom yourself. I could gush about Quitely's genius all day, but good art is hard to describe.
There's not much to say about Jamie Grant, the colorist and inker. He does a great job setting the mood throughout the different settings in the book. Very cold, sanitary whites and grays in the lab, brightful greens and blues outside, and dark blues and grays for the night portions. Exceptionally good work on coloring the blood and gore, truly doing Quitely's pencils justice.
Overall, this is one of the best examples of what comics can achieve. I would recommend this book to people who haven't read a lot of comics to show them what the medium is capable of. It's a book with a clear vision, that executes said vision flawlessly; and so it gets a 5/5 from me.