By Chris Tresson

I’ve picked this up on a limb— sorry. I’ve picked this up on a whim because I thought the cover looked pretty cool. Not always a massive factor in me picking up books for review but a decent cover can’t hurt your chance. Anyways, I’m about to review Extremity #1, which is being released this week by Skybound/Image Comics and is written and drawn by Daniel Warren Johnson, with colors from Mike Spicer. I haven’t read anything that Daniel Warren Johnson has done art for or written to my knowledge, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he has to offer… Here we go.

Upon opening the book, I was expecting to be hammered with lots of information and world building set up before we got to the meat of this thing, but that wasn’t the case. As the reader, I was thrust directly into the action and it didn’t let up at all. I flew through this book but I didn’t feel like I wasn’t being told a story.

In this book, I think, the art is king. It’s a very visual story, the art tells the story better than the words ever could and I think Johnson knows that, as he allows the art to take center stage in this book. There’s dialog, but only when it’s deemed totally necessary to leak information into the readers brain. I enjoyed it quiet a bit and I do think it’s a good set up for the series. 

Back to art. There’s some great visuals in this. Lots of brutal shots and blood and gore to chew over. The setting seems to be a mish-mash of various landscapes already trodden to death in comics, movies and novels but it’s all pulled together to make it seem fresh somehow. It’s dystopian, but it grabs a lot from pop culture and blends it all together.

It’s visceral. It’s filthy and it’s all polished off nicely with Mike Spicer’s excellent colors over the top of it. I can appreciate a book with a decent colorist on it and Extremity definitely has that in Spicer. He’s done a great job here, I’m looking forward to seeing more of this combination.

Overall, having gone in with nothing but the cover attracting me to it, I’ve come away really liking what I read. It’s not entirely different to a lot of comics coming out these days but it’s definitely up there with the best of them. If you’re stuck for something to read today, see if your shop has it in and give it a bash. It’s worth it for the art alone I think. I for one will be waiting to see what the next issue has in store, and where the story is going to lead.

SCORE: 4/5

Extremity #1
Writer/Artist: Daniel Warren Johnson
Colorist: Mike Spicer
Publisher: Skybound/Image Comics