The End #1 - Tommie Kelly

If you judge a book by it's cover (or in this fact a comic by its cover) then this looks a professional thing in my standards. I really love the cover infact, it makes you want to read it, well, it made me want to read it that I couldn't wait any longer and decided to sit down and actually read it!

It's interesting to be thrown into a prologue and have to read a lot of text, and then have something happening at the sides of it. Sure it's been revamped at The End's website so this is basically before the revamp and so I can only judge on what's in the book. I quite liked the story, an apocalyptic world almost, where the human race is just struggling to make ends meet, a virus happened and the survivors are doing just that, surviving. They're all in this one city, ruled by the Martial Lawed Chaplins (not the Charlie version).

There's two real stories (not taking into account the prologue). The first one revolves around two characters who are hiding out in a hotel for unknown reasons when they get an unexpected guest. It gave me that feel of Matrix, of course I love the Matrix so I really quite enjoyed these stories. Guns, guns and more guns!! Though in the first story we never get to see them in action as such and it's mostly setting up a plot that I guess will turn up later.

The second story is more action as such (and involves the car that's on the cover). When two guys go to "pick up" some goods in a restricted zone its uncovered that they are infact betrayed and these Chaplin guards come and fighting ensues, guns, blood, violence.

What I was unsure about is the fact that one of these guys has mysterious powers to heal himself. Sure, heck, they've been through a lot, virus world but I kinda wondered about this. Sure it's about a page of two into it about how he healed a dog and therefore can heal himself from a dagger in the head, but I wonder he must have an Achilles heel or must have some dilemma in the future where he'd probably have to chose one life over another, something like that I would like to see, otherwise I would really hate this "healing" power, and we never get to see the other power from the other man.

Introducing the characters like it was a film was interesting and different. I'm all for being different and unique and sometimes it works but when you're introducing a character as "The Shadowman" or "The Freak Samurai Guy", I think it's trying too much. Maybe if it only introduced the main two characters in the story would have been better. Also another nag, I hate to nag because I quite enjoyed it and will have to wait until the revamped version actually catches up to the book now, but if it's a kinda limited apocalyptic world, why does everything look so... fresh? Buildings, cars. I would have thought it would be a little more basic, but then that's me.

The End has that kinda feel like it's the storyboards to a film, taking in different camera angles and shots, which is quite nice, it shows off its artistic talents to the best and I really loved seeing it, it was almost like seeing a film. I'm eager now to know what happened next, even though it kinda wraps up the stories, it's like Lost, giving you questions you just want to know...

My Rating : If The End is really The End, then what an End it will be. Very interesting, very teasing and very to be continued-esque... I can't wait for more..