Invisible Republic Vol. 01
Gabriel Hardman & Corinna Bechko, writers; Gabriel Hardman, artist; Jordan Boyd, colors
Image Comics, 2015
I'm a big fan of Hardman's Image series Kinski, but I somehow missed this one, so I'm catching up. Very different setting: the year is 2843, and the action takes place on Avalon, a remote colonized moon in the Gliese System. Disgraced reporter Croger Babb has come in search of a story about the recent fall of the dictatorial Malory regime and its effects on the population. No one wants to be interviewed, but purely by chance he runs across the papers of one Maia Reveron.
Turns out that she is the largely forgotten cousin of Arthur McBride, the dictator who had been in charge. Her memoir tells a very different story than the one related in his official autobiography: the tale of Arthur's initial rise to prominence forms a running alternate story line throughout this arc. Babb is not exactly sure what he has, but when someone threatens to kill him for it he knows it's important. After partnering with another journalist who know the moon, they quickly find themselves meeting a surprise character at the close of what is labelled as "Chapter 01."
Hardman's usual story telling skills are on full display here: creative panel layouts and expressive facial expressions are two of his strengths. The colors are dark and muted, in tune with the bleak setting. Boyd still manages to differentiate past and present with a slightly different color pallet: perhaps ironically, the past is the brighter of the two. The collection concludes with a map of the planet Asan and its moons, two text articles relating to the story by Bechko, and the individual issue covers.
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