By Gregor Segner
Review: Earth Final Chapter Vol. 1 (Books 1-5)
Five brilliant stories, three authors, four illustrators. Is this all what we can say about this new series of graphic novels? Definitely not! “Earth Final Chapter” A graphic novella series introduces us to a dystopic science fiction based world and various places.
Each of these authors carry us into a rich detailed world after the thermo nuclear world war three: the world is a wilderness again, populated with mutants and the survivors of the ancient human race. Technology? Mostly lost and collected as artifacts from the past. The humans? Splintered around the globe. Slavery has returned and is returned. The worst of the human behavior is the normal state, but there is always a little bit of humanity, exploring the new (or the lost) and love survived in some people.
The stories are all unique and original. Do you think it all sounds a little bit like Mad Max or the Shadowrun universe? Not really. Yes we have a mixture of low technology and some real high-evaluated technology, but it’s not the same. The three authors have born a total new and fascinating universe, which take our attention and will absorbing your mind until you finished reading.
As an absolute perfect match all illustrations support this situation. Sergei Kritizien, Leonardo Guinard, John Hawkins and Maria F. Loscher are the perfect illustration artist for this job. Everyone created atmospheric artwork, which hold perfect the mood and support the mind-capturing situation. Each single artist show us his or her individual style, but they also draw together a picture, implement a solid, realistic “The Earth Final Chapter” style, which is dark with strong, clear figures and colors. This style is minimized to basic necessities but also can bewitch us with details. They are not overloaded with details and give all readers the possibility to dream. These illustrations are good examples how illustrations should be: they should support us in dreaming inside the story; they should not take this “work” away from us.
About the stories: as described before, we see dark atmospheric dystopic settings and places. Of course we have old bunkers and missiles silos but in truth we can see a masterpiece: All stories are loaded with various places – from the forest to the space, from cities on the land to cities under the sea. It’s fascinating how good it works, that you have not the feeling “oh gosh, they glued some stories on various places together…” It’s not glued, this world, which is created for “The Earth Final Chapter”, is absolute more, it’s like a living structure, which can be expanded by everyone’s imagination. The best thing is, that every short story is possible in this universe. You have no logic errors in constructing the world or the stories.
An interesting fact is, that you can see correlations in Julian Fernandes stories if you read carefully. Every story is independent from all other, but yes there exists correlations.
At last: “The Earth Final Chapter” volume 1 (Books 1-5) get an absolute reading recommendation for everyone who loves science fiction and dystopic and the time for the release of Books 6-10 are not too long, November 2017.