Friday 18 March 2016

Hominids Book 1 (Chapters 1-6), Jordan Kotzebue (Comic Book)



Comic covers for Chapters 1-3

It’s not very often that you can read a book or watch a movie and tell within the first few seconds that you love it. From the first wonderful page of Hominids by Jordan Kotzebue, I was totally hooked.

The comic is based in a mystical, pre-historic forest that is as old as time itself. Within the forest are a number of different human-like species that are all waging war with each other for the scarce resources in the deadly undergrowth.  Dominant among these are the Tree-Dwellers, who try and live pacifist lives and do their best to co-exist with the other species. However, their biggest rivals are the Mountain-Dwellers who jealously look upon the people of the trees and crave their life of prosperity and plentifulness. The Mountain-Dwellers are the most violent faction in the forest and want to consistently wage war on the Tree-Dwellers and turn them into livestock; to help rebuild their once great city.

Nevertheless, when a stray Mountain-Dweller is found wondering the forest, the leader of the Tree-Dwellers Zona hopes to teach the boy that her pack (tribe) do not wish for war and want to co-exist with the men of the mountain. However, men’s hearts don’t easily change and though they befriend the boy, his elders still seek the imprisonment and extermination of the peaceful Tree-Dweller pack.

Page 1 that got me so hooked!

As you can see from the image above, the artwork in this comic is beautiful. I think it’s such a unique twist to base a comic book in a pre-historic forest. This is because most comics are based around futuristic superheroes, which I’m not always a fan of. But for me, artwork isn’t everything when reading a comic. Sure there are thousands of great comic book artists who post on twitter and reddit and though their artwork is great, their writing isn’t always that good.

Hominids Covers Chapers 4-6
I’m please to say Hominids isn’t like this. I thought the writing was great and Jordan did an excellent job of establishing his characters by giving them a short bio at the start of chapter one. Because of this, I found it easy to pick up the characters’ personalities from Jordan’s artwork. In addition, I was totally immersed in the plot and sub-plots of the comic, which isn’t always the case when reading comic books I’ve found on the web! My only small critique is that Jordan obviously tries to get a point across in his comics about the state of the human race and religion. Nevertheless, I think he could make it a little more subtle in his writing when putting this moral into the story, instead of obviously stating his beliefs on the human race (which to be fair, I agree with).

All in all, this was an exceptional comic book and I thoroughly enjoyed it! If you are like me and want to get into comic books I think Hominids would be a perfect place to start and if you are a comic book veteran, why not try something new and refreshingly different?

Please check out Jordan’s website where he posts regular updates to his comics here.

If you’d like to buy any books of Hominids they are available at ComiXology

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