Looking at the last few reviews I’ve done, I realized I haven’t done an Image book in a while. I looked through my collection and saw Horizon #1, a monthly series written by Brandon Thomas with art by Juan Gedeon and Frank Martin. Going over this book again I realized it keeps a lot of the plot to itself in this issue, after I finished the afterword by Brandon Thomas I had a better idea of where this book is going. That being said, I’ll avoid talking about what is included in the afterword and spoilers as much as possible, but just to warn you, there may be some.

This book starts with a space ship careening towards the bright blue marble of Earth, showing extreme amounts of space debris on the way in. Our main character lands in the middle of Ontario, Canada which funny enough I’ve driven through quite a few times on the way from Northwestern Ontario to Southern Ontario. As our character starts heading south, back into civilization, we see our near future with cities in collapse, new technology, and news reports corroborating the dire straits the Earth is in. Not a whole lot of information is given to the reader to know why our protagonist has come to Earth until we get near the end but I’ll stop myself there.

The story of this issue is sparse, telling you what you need to know at that moment more visually than through dialogue; showing an Earth that has seen better days. Being the first issue, there is a lot of setup for the world and our characters that doesn’t jump right into what they’re there for. It gives the reader time to understand and see what is happening in the USA and hear of civil unrest abroad. With so little progression it’s hard to talk about what is happening in this issue but if I go any deeper than I have, it would spoil the rest.

As I mentioned before, the book visually shows you more of the world than the dialogue does early on. This issue does a great job in illustrating the trouble the world is facing currently and uses the color of the book to guide the way you feel about this near future Earth. From the outside we have a bright blue and green world, shining from space, but once we get down to it we see grey and smoggy cities bathed in orange and red street lights. The pencil work on our characters is simple and chaotic when it needs to be, fitting extremely well within the context of the scenes of the book. The movement in fast paced scenes feels natural and the intimate parts focused and well thought out.

When I finished reading this issue I was a little confused about what was happening, there was not a lot of explanation until the last two pages of why our main characters are on Earth. I suppose it’s meant to create tension and suspense in what’s happening, but it wasn’t till I read the afterword by Brandon Thomas that I had a better idea of what to expect in the issues to come. As this is a monthly series it’ll be interesting to pick this back up once they have a few more issues out, but this first issue is too much of a tease for a monthly series.