Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comic plus a hard cover collection:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

I had never heard of “Winter World” before I saw this book advertised but it originally saw print in the 1980’s from Eclipse Comics. The reason I put it on my must buy list is simple: Jorge Zafinno.

I’ve always like his work since I first saw it in the early 1990’s. He was doing some work for Marvel Comics then and the I was working in Marvel’s office at that time. I got to see a lot of his original art that came through and it was some nice stuff.

Zaffino’s storytelling and layouts are straight forward and well done but not really special. It’s his drawing that is unique. He’s a master of organized chaos. He does lots and lots of hatching but not in the usual way. He has a different sense of organization when it comes to his hatching than most artists do. It even looks like happenstance at times but having seen his originals I know it’s not. He uses white paint along with black ink to hatch some areas. That means he’s thinking about it and it’s not dashed off.

“Winter World” is a post apocalyptic tale of a man trying to survive in a world of permanent winter. He’s a wandering trader but that doesn’t last very long as he’s captured by some bad guys and made a slave. Now he has to try and survive. And he’s also trying to keep a young teenage girl he rescued alive too.

This is no feel good story. The world is a miserable place with plenty of evil people in it and you better have a plan in “Winter World”. Dixon’s writing is solid and nothing to complain about but there is not much more to it than telling a good story. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before so don’t expect novelty but it is a tale well told. It reminds me of other post apocalyptic stories that I may have read in “Heavy Metal” or something similar.

Overall Zaffino was the reason I bought this and I was not disappointed. The man was a talented and unique artist. If you’re in the mood for a cold and bleak story of people living in the not too distant future during an ice age then this is the book to check out.