By d. emerson eddy — It's ridiculously hot here right now. 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), not including the humidity. We've thankfully got air conditioning, but it's little comfort when there are rolling brownouts or you're a little furry beast with no sweat glands. Although muggy humid summers aren't abnormal here, the heights the temperatures are reaching are, especially as they're reaching to higher latitudes. It just brings to mind yet another struggle we have underlying all of the other current problems surrounding us. There are some stories out there promoting current proactive activism, some exploring what's going on while a dramatic change occurs, and others set long after the “apocalypse” hits. North Wind #1 by David DiGilio, Alex Cal, Francisco Gamboa, Marshall Dillon, and Terri Delgado is one of the latter.

North Wind #1 picks up a little better than two hundred years into a new ice age caused by rising water levels, new prevailing cold winds arising from that, and a human race split into different camp fighting over resources, with the remnants of our old cities and culture lying beneath layers of snow and ice. While you could argue that after two centuries, much of what remained sticking out from below wouldn't remotely resemble what it does now, it serves as a visual reminder of what we left behind in this future.

The art from Alex Cal and Francisco Gamboa give us a desolate and harsh landscape buried in snow and ice, a California changed dramatically by the weather conditions, with some animals completely foreign to the continent. Cal's style has a beautiful openness and detail to it. Somewhat akin to the work of Stuart Immonen, but with more of a grit and shadow to it reinforcing the danger inherent in this world. The attention to detail on the animals and just the layers of characters' clothing is impressive. Aided greatly by the choice in color palette from Gamboa. Since the world is covered in ice, there's a lot of white and blue, but it allows the color choices for the clothing to stand out all the more. It also gives the impression that in a world of grey and white, even a little pop of color is a sign of hope.

We're largely introduced to how this world works through the characters, following a pair of children out hunting, to the hunter they come across who saves them from a white tiger, to their families that live in a settlement that's apart from a larger camp that seems to be run by a dangerous warlord. It's interesting to see here the structure of what could be considered moral compromises, changes in the ethics of how hunting works, and the shift to an uneven power dynamic when it comes to who supplies the heat. I quite like the pacing that DiGilio takes explaining the high concept in the opening few pages, then drilling down through the society to give everything a much more personal outlook. There's also an interesting approach that Dillon and Delgado take to the lettering, setting the hunter (a skinrunner) apart from the rest of the characters with a different font and word balloon weight. In the beginning, not really knowing who he is, it makes you wonder why he's different from the others.

In North Wind #1, DiGilio, Cal, Gamboa, Dillon, and Delgado kick off an entertaining look at what society could potentially become in the aftermath of violent climate change. Presuming, of course, any survival and what kind of moral compromises that we might make forced into a harsh world.

North Wind #1

North Wind #1
Writer: David DiGilio
Artist: Alex Cal
Colorist: Francisco Gamboa
Letterers: Marshall Dillon & Terri Delgado
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Written by David DiGilio, best known for the movie Eight Below and TV's Traveler, North Wind is a five-issue mini-series set in a future Los Angeles. A new ice age has covered the Earth, and in this dystopian future, people burn books for fuel and Skinrunners trade valuable pelts for rations and warmth. Upon this violent, damaged world, a hero will rise! 
Release Date: March 5, 2008
Price: $1.99 | Collection available for $7.99

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.