By Zack Quaintance — I had a weird double reaction to the announcement of Tartarus. I loved the creative team — writer Johnnie Christmas, artist Jack T. Cole (an industry superstar waiting to happen), and letterer Jim Campbell (quite possibly the busiest man in comics) — and I was stunned by the preview artwork, as I tend to be by anything Cole draws. The tagline, however, said something like “Mos Eisley meets Breaking Bad!” which is is a truly inspired confusing way to describe anything.

So, a deeply character-driven about a middle-aged science teacher giving into his fantasies to be a terrible person, murderer, and meth cook in the late 2000s meets the skeezy space cantina from Star Wars? Huh. But, thankfully, this comic has nothing to do with any of that, and I only bring up the marketing as a means of communicating just how difficult this story is to describe or classify. Indeed, my impression of Tartarus #1 was in spite of some familiar subject matter, I hadn’t quite seen a comic like this one before, so singular was the telling of this story.

The main reason Tartarus #1 feels this way is, to be reductive, the art. I could spend this entire review singing Cole’s praises — the attention to detail, the use of perspective, the sci-fi concepts — but my main takeaway here is that the artist has outsized talent plus a vision we haven’t seen before, which in this medium guarantees a certain level of immersion (as evidenced last year by Ian Bertram’s work in Little Bird). You can just page through this issue and soak in the aesthetic, and that’s worth the price of purchase. It’s a matter of come for the art, stay for the story.

And once we have all arrived for the art, writer Christmas does spin a stellar story (even if I personally find the connections to Star Wars and Breaking Bad a bit of a reductive stretch). In terms of plot specifics, this first over-sized issue is split into halves. In the first part, we get an action-packed prison break set in the past. In the second part, we get a young woman sort of straight-edging her way through the military of some vast power system...only to find out at the end that her mother was a famous criminal and now she must account for her sins. This premise is interesting enough, if a tad familiar in that child must deal with parent’s surprising past is not quite a trope but has been done throughout the years.

Thematically, I found the story of this comic to be far more interesting, especially as it pertains to the subtle hints of gray areas. This story seems to set the audience up for misdirection in very nuanced ways from the advent of the opening high action escape. How do we know that the woman escaping from prison is bad? Well, she’s in prison...that’s enough to foster an assumption, right? Not quite. At least, I was left with the impression there might be more to this, given the healthy amount of love she seemed to have in her personal life. But there are also subtle hints throughout that maybe it’s the system that’s bad (the authoritarianism, the severity of reactions, etc.), and that maybe she was fighting for a worthy cause, and that maybe we should check our assumptions at the door (which, incidentally, is why I don’t see much of a thematic connection to Breaking Bad, which in my opinion was all about a middle-aged male fantasy of how old guys could be super great at crime if they just gave it their all, with little room for gray on account of the constant murders).  

Moving forward, I am all in on this comic. I’ll be there until the end, savoring all the twists, the character development, and, of course, the stellar artwork. This first issue is a blast to read that also conveys a deep potential for twists and surprises and possibly even great meaning. There’s not much else I could want.

Overall: Tartarus #1 is a powerhouse of a debut comic, one that feels immersive both in terms of its artwork and the power of its themes. This comic is entertaining at the highest level while also conveying deep potential for twists, surprises, and grand meaning to come. Buy this book. 10/10

Tartarus #1
Writer: Johnnie Christmas
Artist: Jack T. Cole
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $5.99
Release Date: February 12, 2020

Read more great comic book reviews here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.