Snowfall #1 Advance Review

January 12, 2016

It’s 2045. The climate of the Earth has crashed, and humans now live in small company-run settlements, in the Cooperative States of America.

It never snows.

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Snowfall, the newest series from Image, imagines this future of greenhouse effect run wild, and the “terrorist” who’s using weather as a weapon. Is it good?

Snowfall #1 (Image Comics)

“Let it gooooo, let it GOOOOO!”

This first issue, tasked with setting the scene for this future state of the world, does an admirable job of scene building.

Being a greedy binge-watcher like most of us are nowadays, I wanted more out of this issue; to learn the how and why behind the earth’s current state. Still, the loose threads of plot left behind at the end of issue 1 do spell out a tantalizing thread, so for now, I’m interested in the next issues.

I think the flaw with this issue is the major flaw inherent to episodic content: the amount of information one can share is limited by the book itself, i.e. pages, size of panels, etc. That’s why it took me two read-throughs to really follow the narrative, and even now I’m still a little confused. Issue two might do a great job of clearing up that confusion, but this might be one of those books that reads very well in a collection, and a little oddly in individual issues.

Artwork wise, Martin Morazzo puts out a great panel with weird looking characters that brings to mind Darick Robertson’s run on Transmetropolitan, but with far more subtle touches. The art sets the mood of this book even more so than the story, with a great use of shadow to keep mysterious items ominously present in backgrounds.

Is It Good?

I think so. Like I mentioned above, the drawback of a single issue is that like a pilot episode of a series, it’s hard to get enough data out in a way that launches the series while also creating an entertaining and fun issue.

I’m going to give this a 7 out of 10. The setting, the art, and the strange new world these characters live in are all compelling and interesting, but I think the plot got hamstrung by world building, and thus suffers from some confusion.

I’m always a fan of picking up #1’s to see what cool thoughts are making it to page, and so this does get a recommendation from me to grab and read. Hopefully issue 2, with the setting and world already established, can dig into what’s going on with the mysterious White Wizard we see on the cover.

Look for it on stands February 17!