There’s a lot to take in while reading Jason Aaron and Mahmud Asrar’s Bug Wars #1. For starters, there’s its premise: when moving into the house inhabited by his late father, Slade Slaymaker discovers a mysterious medallion and is suddenly shrunk down to the size of an insect. It’s here that he learns that the insects he’s collected his whole life are embroiled in a fierce war, and that his arrival could turn the tide.
This doesn’t sound too bad for what’s essentially “Game of Thrones meets Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”, as Aaron so eloquently puts it. But since this is a Jason Aaron project, readers can expect some absolutely wild ideas. Barbarians who ride Hercules beetles, a literal army of ants that take to the skies, maggot monks and spiders who spin spells within their webs – all of this and more is contained within the pages of Bug Wars #1, and all of it bears Aaron’s signature creative stamp.
But what’s more interesting is how Aaron builds things up. Bug Wars #1 doesn’t start as most stories would do; it spends the first third of its story showcasing the battle between the different factions of the Bug Warriors, and after what appears to be a horrible storm (in reality, the blades of a lawnmower) it shifts to the human perspective. Aaron slowly peels back the layers of his human characters as well; Slade, having never known his father, forms a connection via collecting bugs while his older brother Sydney has a vehement hatred of them.
Image Comics
Such a compelling story deserves an artist who is ready to bring it to life, and Asrar is more than up to the task. Asrar previously brought Aaron’s King Conan miniseries to life over at Marvel, and with Bug Wars #1 he goes big, even when the action is at a microscopic scale. Heads are hacked off, warriors are split in half, and in what might be the issue’s most grotesque moment, a corpse is shown at a desk, one eyeball dangling out of its skull alongside intestines spilling out. If that wasn’t macabre enough, said corpse is covered in bugs.
But Asrar also has a keen eye for detail. The swords most of the Bug Warriors wield are the mandibles or legs of other insects. Ants wear gleaming golden armor that has a decidedly Roman touch to it. Slade, being on the cusp of adolescence, has a face that’s pockmarked with acne scars – Asrar was clearly going for a “What if Luke Skywalker actually had to go through puberty?” look for him, and it works. All of this is rendered in a rich, vibrant color courtesy of Matthew Wilson, whether it’s the sandy red of the anthill battle that opens the issue or the shadow-soaked, cobweb-covered mess that is Slade’s father’s old study.
Topping things off is the lettering work from Becca Carey. Not only does Carey give certain words emphasis with her bold approach to lettering – Slade calling Sydney a “f*cking asshole” has the zing you’d expect from an angry teen – but she also delivers some captions that feel ripped from the pages of a journal, adding to Bug Wars‘ pulpy feel. The final pages are also packed full of extras, including a map of the Slaymaker house and breakdowns of the insect races that appear in the book.
Bug Wars #1 might have a world that’s small in scale, but it’s bursting with potential thanks to its creative team. Aaron and Asrar deliver a comic that’s bloody, epic, and grabs the reader from the first page and probably won’t let go until the final page of the final issue. Yeah. It’s that good.
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