Snow Angels
Jeff Lemire, writer; Jock, artist & cover
Comixology Originals, 2021

Lemire and Jock told this story in the form of two Seasons, totaling almost 250 pages. It takes place in a stark, frozen dystopia, opening with a family skating down an endless ice trench. The trench is their whole world, in the midst of a seemingly frozen world. In fact, they live by three rules: You must never leave the Trench; The Trench provides; The Trench is endless. It should not be surprising that all of these rules turn out to be false in the end.

The first season takes place entirely in the trench. Sisters Milliken and Mae are out on a scavenging trip with their father Karl, but they return to the settlement to find all of the other Trenchfolk dead. Soon they are on the run from the Snowman, an avenging angel in a futuristic battle suit (which the girls had thought was just a story to keep them obedient). So maybe everything they had been taught was true after all, including the legendary Colden Ones (hard to believe no editor tried to talk Lemire out of that clunky invention, which I kept misreading as the Olden Ones).

Fortunately, the second part finally reveals a great deal of history--of both the family and humanity at large. Turns out that Karl, his brother and his wife (who died giving birth to Mae) had themselves ventured out of the trench, encountering a mysterious space ship with dead aliens aboard. Miliken makes the same discovery, and the onboard computer system offers her the same mission status report. The aliens were gathering resources for Earth, but the discovery of some huge eggs changed the mission. The meaning of it all is a bit hazy, but the bottom line is the departure of the survivors on an alien life raft. This was definitely not one of Lemire's better stories, but Jock's stylish and energetic art manages to sell it most of the time. All Amazon Prime subscribers can read this and the other Comixology Originals for free.

 

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