By Zack Quaintance — Rooting comic book stories firmly in current events can be a tricky business. I would argue that the vast majority of comics (even the most fantastical) have a lot to say about current events, growing as they do from the subconscious of creators living within them, but very few can consistently evoke details, news items, socio-political realities and so on in a way that makes their happenings seem totally plausible. It’s one thing for say, Watchmen, to feel like the people are real, but it’s entirely another for those people to be reacting to the same issues we do outside our doors.

Matt Hawkins, however, has long proven otherwise with his series Think Thank (illustrated by Rashan Ekedal), which is grown from real science, real DARPA research, and real headlines. Think Tank (a book I have long enjoyed) even contains backmatter that gives readers a peak behind the curtain, elaborating on the real research that informs its plots. Hawkins has done this again with his newest comic, The Clock, which is illustrated by Colleen Doran, colored by Bryan Valenza, and lettered by Troy Peteri.

The Clock is a comic that like Think Tank feels like it’s clearly taking place in our world, grown as it is from an idea that the world has become so overpopulated, that nature has sought to aggressively correct the folly with a fast-spreading and sudden new form of cancer. Like much of Hawkins past works, this new book feels like it grew from a question about how the world would cope with such crowding mixed with actual research to try to get at the answer. The story in this book also works hard to root these global issues in character, giving us a lead who’s at the center of things both professionally and personally, being a cancer researcher who also lost wife to the outbreak.

Doran’s artwork is also just a really great fit for this comic. She’s able to handle a wide-range of different aesthetic challenges here, from illustrating talking head scenes to action sequences to (my personal favorites) wide-establishing shots with much detail that show us things like refugee camps and mass interments in cemeteries. It’s all colored really well too, with Valenza using shades that fit the various sequences — muted blues for serious science speak, dusty earth tones for scenes set outside in the stricken world, etc.

In the end, The Clock #1 is a thoughtful and engaging comic that has a real urgency to it. While reading, I obviously thought quite a bit about Think Tank, wondering if the changing nature of our headlines since 2016 would make it trickier to write that book now, with our geo-political relationships seeming to be in such a state of constant flux. I don’t know, but I do know The Clock feels perfect for our times (sorry!), taking a broader view at an international crisis event that has changed everything on this planet over the course of all our lifetimes. It’s an ambitious comic, one that delivers a debut that has me very interested to see where this is all going.

Overall: Rooted in real-world ongoing questions about overpopulation, The Clock #1 is an ambitious comic, one that delivers a debut that has me very interested to see where it’s going. 8.5/10

The Clock #1
Writer: Matt Hawkins
Artist: Colleen Doran
Colorist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Troy Peteri
Publisher: Image Comics - Top Cow
Price: $3.99

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