Comic Review: The Great Divide #1

Writer: Ben Fisher 

Artist: Adam Markiewicz

Every now and then you need to roll the dice on a new comic series, they can’t all be winners but if just one is… worth it. Let’s find out if Dynamite’s “The Great Divide” is one of those comics that was worth rolling the dice on.

1. No Touch n’ Go – The premise of the book is rather unique. Unlike most post-apocalyptic, we don’t enter a world after it has been messed up, but a world that was messed up and the effects haven’t gone away. You see in the world of The Great Divide, human contact kills one of the parties involved and the survivor absorbs their memories. The resulting world is one where folks cover as much of their body as possible and avoid contact.
2.  Sex as Currency – In a world where physical contact can literally lead to death, intimacy and sex are of course the table… at least with another person. Then the means to help one’s self unleash repressed desires becomes a commodity in which you can deal. And in this book, sex as a bargaining tool is examined. Not just in the physical act, but being able to exchange for naughty magazines and toys or watching people undress. Curious to see how the book walks the line with the particulars of the world.
3.  Bastards Covered Bastards – Speaking of the world when you have folks peddling in sex and avoiding all contacts, you’re really just left with a world of people who can’t or won’t make many close relationships. In other words, these aren’t good people and the characters we meet in the first issue deliver on that promise. We meet our two leads robbing other characters in the book. One through cunning and one through sheer force, from the start you get who they are and really why you aren’t supposed to be cheering for either one of them. As the issue continues though, you can begin to see some of the good seeping in. As the world around them develops, the book has a lot of promise in molding them to situations and people.
4. The Undefined Power – As noted above, when you kill someone via contact you take their memories, but is that all you acquire? The end of the first issue seems to suggest that you gain any innate abilities they had. Such as speaking in a different language or combat training. I’m not 100% sure on that, but another hook for the future.
5. Always Sunny – Surprisingly for such a morbid book the colors aren’t as washed out as I would imagine. It’s refreshing to see a bit of color in this world. Also some curious design decisions, which makes sense like hanging naked bodies outside of properties. When people need to get their jollies…

Review 4 (out of 7) – The book has an interesting enough premise to get you through the first issue wanting more, but not all of what you desire is from the story beats but by what isn’t explained. I’m curious to see where the book goes in future installments.