Something wonderful and unexpected is going on in Ben Stenbeck’s Our Bones Dust #1. The book, ostensibly a gruesome account of a world in its death throes – humanity reduced to a violent and nomadic existence, cannibalistically surviving in a bone-strewn wasteland – begins with frank, benevolent curiosity in the form of Attis, a sort of extraterrestrial social anthropologist cataloging the Earth’s remains and tagging the remaining population.
While his official mission is unclear, it is implied – by a spaceborne colleague – that there is a Star Trek-like prime directive of non-interference in place that Attis has almost certainly been breaking, its interest in humanity bordering on empathy.
Attis appears to see something worth cherishing in that humanity, even if that something is not evident to the readers; in our introductory scene, we find a group of ravaged survivors intent on murdering a child over a meager bottle of water. The kid is clever, however, and by no means averse to violence: they’re willing to slice a man in half to escape.
The book immediately establishes a brutal dichotomy between this hyper-violence and the almost whimsical presence of our alien beings, and it’s in this dichotomy that this first issue delivers its eager hook. We are meant to root for this kid, but we’re meant to delight in Attis more. The book smacks – however ridiculously and tenuously – of a gory Adventure Time, as if Attis and the kid might form a ‘boy and his magical dog’ relationship (even if that boy is Attis and the dog is this feral child).
As with any post-apocalypse, there is the inherent mystery of how we got here, and this is compounded by Attis’ unclear motivations; add to that a grisly scene of carnage and the kid’s pursuit by violent (and possibly insane) men, and Our Bones Dust provides ample driving momentum. Add to that the strangely wonderful tone, and it’s hard not to anxiously await the next issue.
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