What would you do if you knew the future? Not specific, but the broad strokes of what's coming, and more importantly that it's going to be pretty terrible for everyone involved? That's the question posed in the new digital first series by writer Joshua Hale Fialkov (I Vampire, The Ultimates) and Joe Infurnari (Ultraboy)
It's starts with five friends looking to bury a time capsule. They're all about to start their respective lives and they want something to come back to later in life. Instead they find the titular bunker, filled with files and a hand written letter from 4 of them.
The fifth isn't so lucky.
This is my first comic by Fialkov, who I've heard consistently good things about his cult I, Vampire book from the New 52. Here he shows good pacing, well defined characters that have a realistic dynamic about them. One is clearly marginalized by the rest of the group which is pretty common is the real world and fairly uncommon in fiction. There are a lot of balls in motion here as well for the plot. We've got the future, what everyone knows is coming, the characters unease at the letters, and a character based twist in the final page that could play out a hundred different ways.
The art is black and white and fairly scratchy, with lots of ink and shadows. It fits the bleak tone of the comic perfectly, but I could easily see it not being to everyone's preference. Each of the characters are clearly recognizable in both there present and future incarnations. Future and past sequences are shaded differently to provide a nice visual cue to when we are. Its little things like that which are often overlooked that help pull this book together.
This series is digital only at the moment. It's releasing similarly to BKV's The Private Eye as a direct, drm free download from the creators website for $1.99 US. It will also be available on Comixology in the future. My only complaint with this release is that the pages were clearly sized for tablets in the 10" range and since I read on a first gen Nexus 7 right now I had to scroll a bit.
If you're a fan of time travel stories and want to support creator owned releases outside of the print system you should really check out The Bunker when it releases on August 4th.
www.thebunkercomic.com
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