Road of Bones
Rich Douek, writer; Alex Cormack, art & colors; Justin Birch, letters
IDW Publishing, 2020
More historical horror by the same creative team who made Sea of Sorrows. This time the setting is the Siberian Gulag of Kolyma, and the year is 1950. Prison life is totally hellish: the story takes its title from the practice of burying the bodies of deceased prison laborers in the highway they are building (it is actually called the Road of Bones, but the official name is R504 Kolyma Highway). So it is not hard to see why prisoners would want to escape. But it's kind of an "out of the frying pan, into the fire" situation, as escapees are faced with hundreds of miles of frozen tundra before reaching freedom. Roman Morozov is a political prisoner, serving 25 years hard labor for telling an off-color joke about Stalin (he also believes in Domoviks--fairy tale protectors--going so far as to leave food offerings for one). Grigori is a gangster, and Sergei is a go-between. Once outside the prison the trio has trouble working as a team from the start. But the situation spirals into desperate hunger, then madness. Cormack's art is almost a polar opposite from the other series: apart from the night scenes, the setting is often snowy white. A great contrast to the frequent bloody red.
Replies
Glad to see you read this, Mark. You got to it pretty quick. I felt that with a smaller cast, that we got a tighter story here. I also found it easier to follow since it wasn't so dark all of the time like Sea of Sorrows.
Yes, it was definitely easier to follow. The covers give you a good idea of how the interior art tend to look.
Travis Herrick (Modular Mod) said: