a review of
the preview by Sam White
A powerless member of the new media, I was given the
gracious opportunity to preview an upcoming comic book by the above-mentioned
Martin & Todd called “Hydroland”.
Briefly, Hydroland is the story of a people who live in the water. They’ve lived in peace until, suddenly they
are invaded.
Now, the preview I got to see gives some hints at what the
invasion is (thematically) but not how it is carried out practically—in the
comic book, anyway. I won’t give that
away, except to say that it’s going to take some skill to carry out. These guys have it, I think (they tell a good
preview, anyway), but it’s tough. How
many times in school were you shown a painting or read a poem and the teacher
told you about all the deep, sensual or violent undertones and you sat there
thinking, “I thought it was about a basketball that’s gone flat.” And try as you might, you can never see
anything other than the flat basketball.
Martin and Todd are creating (the full book’s not out, yet)
an ambitious story of sin and redemption, couched in a story of an underwater
society and depicted in an artistic style that is reminiscent of the best of R.
Crumb’s work but (IMHO) more cheerful, even when the story itself takes a grim
turn. The bits of artwork we get to see
in this preview (download the preview for free here: http://comics.drivethrustuff.
