A small desert town. Small town life. A stoner gas station attendant. Who would have thought they would make a great setting and main character for a cool story?

Image Comics delivers The Saviors #1, just in time for Christmas. Written by James Robinson, with cool and simple looking art from J. Bone, this story is completely not what I expected. Things start out fairly simply with a day in the life of Tomas Ramirez, a small-town loser who never did anything with his life. As he smokes his weed and waxes philosophical with a lizard out back of Gas Haven where he works… if you can call it that.

Tomas’ philosophy of life can be summed in one line, “I like the familiar”. Things should just be the same. His friends left when they graduated high school, but he just kind of stuck around. Smokin’ weed and livin’ life, right?

Sometimes things happen that change your entire worldview. That about sums up the blow that Tomas’ reality gets when he is sunbathing and hears a strange language. Upon investigation, he sees what looks like two monsters dressed as the sheriff and a military general. They are speaking some weird language and as their head turn, they are human looking again. Toma hides and gets away without being found out.

Now enters the what if… what if the world he knows is not the real world at all? Or, worse yet, what if he has just smoked too much pot? Doubts and fears creep in.

The end of the comic is pretty cool as he goes out to the junkyard to visit his buddy, Frank, who reassures him that he is just overbaked and really needs to take a break. Maybe not lay off the smoke completely, but just a bit. Tomas is good with this and starts to head home when the sheriff shows up to see if Tomas is doing alright. This i a very awkward exchange and Toma begins to believe that what he saw in the park was real and is almost run over by the car from a mysterious stranger he had met earlier in the day. The stranger almost runs over the sheriff and yells to Tomas to run because the sheriff is only out to hurt him.

There is a mad chase across the desert ending in the sheriff going full alien monster and chasing Tomas off a cliff. Definitely a twisty story that went a really cool direction. The black and whites and soft greys of J. Bone’s art make for a stark depiction of the life the Tomas has chosen and the sleepy desert town he calls home… or called home.

I like the writing, it is a smooth story and kept me interested. I really want to see how the story turns out. I would recommend you pick this book up, especially since it falls in a fairly light week. Have a great New Year and come back here next week for more reviews, news, and comic book stuff than you can shake a lump of cooked sauerkraut at.