Deron Generally
Deron Generally
The Weatherman #1
Image Comics
Written by Jody Leheup
Art by Nathan Fox
Colors by Dave Stewart
Letters by Steve Wands
Mars 2770. An aging woman is visited by a younger one and the two of them make their way to a memorial to a tragedy. One that will form the basis of the central mystery of this first issue for sure and possibly the series as a whole.
The next day, Mars’ favorite weatherman Nathan Bright is late for work. Not just late, he’s scheduled to go on after a series of commercial breaks and he hasn’t even gotten out of bed. After getting the call to move his ass, he gets himself in gear and gets his dog Sadie and heads to the station. There’s a devil-may-care attitude to Nathan and he doesn’t seem to take anything or anyone seriously. Something that is evident in his presentation of the weather on the planet.
You get a sense of who Nathan is and his impact on people around him not only from the reactions that we’re shown in the issue, but also in the narrative. Nathan helps people forget the tragedy that befell Earth and that is a commodity that has allowed him a level of autonomy that others would not get. While Nathan continues his surface existence in the here and now, events are unfolding around him that he is completely clueless about and that he is in the center of. This becomes more evident when he takes a woman he’s attracted to out for a date and finds out that she hiding secrets of her own. Ones that could get him killed.
This was a really exciting first issue that had a lot of interesting and exciting twists that I wasn’t expecting. The dialogue was crisp and fun and the art is great as well. It has a frenetic style that makes me think of motion in every panel. I found myself at the end of this issue wondering what comes next and how Nathan is involved.
