Written by
Ian Edginton
Art by
Francesco Trifogli
Apocalypse
fiction seems to be big right now. The
zombie outbreak is the most popular, but hell, turn off the power, kill
everybody with a plague, launch some nukes, whatever you want, people are into the
destruction of humanity. Hinterkind
takes a twist on it by ending humanity and marking the start of fantasy, but
there’s not much past that.
Prosper
Monday is one of the citizens of one of the last surviving colonies after a
mysterious disease wiped out most of the world.
When her grandfather goes off to find out why another colony in Albany
isn’t responding, she goes on a journey of her own when it turns out her friend
Marcus has grown a tail. And the two
groups both end up finding out new information about the new world: as Mother Nature
has taken over, trolls, goblins, elves, and every other fantasy creature have
come out of hiding.
The
concept is definitely interesting. It’s
always nice to have a real threat in the post-apocalyptic world, and this is a
serious threat as it quickly becomes apparent that humankind is not prepared to
fight monsters. There’s only one problem
with it: the monsters end up outshining the human characters. This is a threat in anything with more exotic
characters (see: the Transformers franchise), and whenever it hits, it hits
hard. At the end of the book, not only
did I not really care about the humans, but I couldn’t tell you anything about
them. Who is Prosper? I couldn’t really tell you much besides “she’s
the main character”. Meanwhile, shifts
over to California, where the elf queen and her daughter are, end up much more
interesting. The monsters who look to
capture the humans for money are good antagonists. Hell, even a secret military base full of
people who have become monsters unto themselves are more interesting than the
main characters.
The
plot here also just kind of meanders along, bringing up interesting details and
then dropping them. I want to know why
Angus has a tail, but at some point, the comic just pushes it to the side. I want to know how the monsters hid before
the apocalypse, but the book just details a little before moving on. I want to know Prosper, but she’s basically
just along for the ride. There were
times when I was able to go along too, to just enjoy things as they were going,
but even then, I felt like the book could be more and it wasn’t.
Hinterkind
is a classic case of an interesting concept that’s done in by a less than great
execution.
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