The following contains spoilers to No man of the earth # 1,, On sale now from Image Comics.
It is interesting to see how the term “high concept” has taken such a specific meaning to be something that easily comes down to a catchy sentence (the “height of the elevator” proverbial), but really, the high concepts are extremely common each time you launch a kind of new idea. Guards Perhaps summarized to “Mystery of the murder of superheroes”, but devil, you can go even further, and boil things like Superman for “only surviving a destroyed planet landed on earth, and uses the powers he earns to be a stranger on earth to fight for the truth, justice and the American way”. However, I think that when people hear the term “high concept”, they really think “a catchy and new idea for a story”. For example, in the world of comics, one of the best high concepts was 30 days at nightThe idea of ”What if the vampires attack one of these cities in Alaska who do not see the sun for a month?” The late Gardner Fox would even talk about his “What if …?” Hall, where he would offer stories ideas using this sentence. “What if …?” In No Man’s Land, the writer / artist Szymon Kudrański offered his own 30 -day hook, and it’s a good one.
No man of the earth # 1 is from the writer / artist Szymon Kudrański, the DC Hopkins letter and the assistance of the editor / translator Atom Morwill, and he relies on the high concept of the series in a strong story that draws all kinds of cold war concepts to really highlight the central hook of the series.
What is the “high concept” of No Man’s Land?
In case you do not know of them, the Diomede Islands are two islands that are in the Strait of Bering between the United States and Russia. The only island, Big Diomede Island, is part of Russia, while the small island, the island of Little Diomede, is part of Alaska. The international date line goes into the water between the islands, so Big Diomède is almost a day in advance on Little Diomède (because the time zones are a little badly defined, it is actually 21 hours in advance). This led the islands to have the secondary nicknames of the island of tomorrow and the island of yesterday.
Thus, during the winter, the water between the islands freezes, and it therefore creates a passage of ice from one island to another, so you can literally walk from the United States to Russia.
Okay, what happens if, at the height of the Cold War, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, a murder was committed along this icy path, between the two islands, in a temporary “land” which is not belonging to Russia or the United States. Well, as you can imagine, this is precisely what is happening in this series, and it is the “high concept” of No Man’s Land.
At the start of the number, we are presented to Henry Collins, an FBI veteran agent who is almost completed his career with the office. He has trouble typing his official resignation letter, so he decides that he may just have to write it in pencil. He was then summoned to the office of his boss, where he discovers that the FBI will not allow him to retire, because they need him for a very special mission, the above -mentioned murder between the two Diomedes.
Well, not surprisingly, the woman of Collins, who expected him to be withdrawn today, is not satisfied with this new turn of events. Surprisingly (well, at least for Collins), she will not bear it, so she leaves Collins just before her great national security mission …
The delicate thing for Collins is that it is only allowed to investigate the small island, and the KGB agent sent by the Russians can only investigate the big island, and if one of them was “captured” on the other island, they would be treated like a spy, and, as you might suppose, it is not a good situation.
The fact that this island is so distant either that there is not even an airport, and Collins must be deposited by helicopter by a pilot who tells him disturbingly to try to survive …
Kudrański is an excellent artist, and he really brought back the distance from the situation in which the Collins agent is. Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber had their own series of “High Concept” comics, Projectionwhich concerns a murder committed in one of these research stations in Antarctica, and as you can see from the title of this series, Rucka and Lieber understood that one of the most bizarre things for people to manage in this world is the idea of a “white” and Kudrański, also, uses this concept with a great effect in this comic strip.
The only thing I thought I was a bit of a drawback in the first issue is that I would have liked to make the KGB agent introduces earlier into the issue. From what I read on the series, it seems that it will actually be the co-chief of the series, and if this is the case, then I would have preferred that it gets a projector a little earlier than the second issue of the series. There are only four problems in the book, so if you do not start the interactions between the two main characters to the number 2, this puts you a little behind the eight bullets.
This is not a major concern, however, and the overall result of this first issue was still quite good. Solid works of art and bad mood, a convincing main character and an exceptional high concept are certainly a good combination, and this series has a lot to do, and I will certainly continue to read the rest of this mystery.
Source: Image Comics