By Zack Quaintance — There’s just something about post apocalyptic settings that lend themselves to tales of family. We’ve seen it often, in everything from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Price-winning novel The Road to Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 cinematic meditation on childless society, Children of Men. When the world as we know it ends, our thoughts and feelings turn to the core of our humanity — family. The creators of the forthcoming one-shot comic Mother - A Post Apocalyptic Tale understand this well, putting the titular bond at the heart of their poignant and emotional new story.

And we’ll get into the how and why this story is so poignant and emotional in a moment. First, let’s look at the plot: this is a story of a mother and a daughter, though not by blood. They only have each other as they wander a ruined world where the sun is gone, taking with it animal and plant life, leaving a scarred landscape teaming with savage and ruthless cannibals.

On a technical level, this is a well-told story and a great collaboration. The linework is clear and assured, almost matter-of-fact as it easily delivers this visual story. Artist Dan Buksa understands that the core of this thing is the mother-daughter relationship, and his greatest flourishes take place at the moments when that relationship is most intense. With a dystopian sci-fi world in his hands, there must have been real temptation to over-focus on some of the grittier elements the main characters encounter, and, to be sure, those are all well-done. But the art that lingered with me most after putting down this comic was in the quiet moments, the moments when the duo are dealing with fearful decisions, nights of uncertainty, and the aftermath of unspeakable tragedy. Colorist Gab Contreras augments Buksa’s work well, especially in the opening sequence, using a blue palette to ground the first pages of the book as a clear flashback.

What stood out to me as most unique about Mother, however, was the way the book fearlessly tried to blend prose with comics storytelling. There are panels throughout this comic in which we get darkened backgrounds with white lettering (done by Shawn Daley) upon them, bouncing from descriptive bits about the nature of the changed world to additive dialogue exchanges.

Now, I enjoy reading literary fiction. In fact, I often enjoy it more than I do reading comics, but I have in the past rarely enjoyed comics that are bent on aggressively blending the two mediums. They are in my opinion typically so different that slamming them together tends to greatly weaken narrative cohesion. There is also a tendency, I think, among many writers (especially more celebrated comics writers) to equate comics blended with prose to simply writing more, which frequently lands these experiments in a gray area where they don’t quite work as a comic and they certainly don’t quite work as a short story.

Mother: A Post Apocalyptic Tale avoids those pitfalls, and a big part of the reason why is that writer Eastin DeVerna’s script never once comes close to even grazing excess. It’s a spare, muscular script that concentrates its beauty in quick bursts of prose that almost without exception add something new to the comic, rather than repeating any of the visual narrative. In one particularly well-done example of this, there is a page led off by a clipped dialogue exchange. It’s five lines in total, spanning no more than 25 words, if even that much. But it’s also a panel that does so much work for our story, enhancing the bond between the mother and daughter at the narrative’s center, while answering a natural question about why that bond was formed to begin with…and it does it in a way that is both clear and poignant, about as literary as a concise exchange can get.

That’s really the strength of DeVerna’s writing throughout: it’s both literary and brief, delivering beautiful prose while at the same time understanding that its target audience — folks who primarily read comics — is used to a certain speed, a certain pacing, and that a wall of even the most gorgeous text will slow said pacing down, detracting from the experience. That’s definitely not this book, not at all. The hybrid touches in Mother are all additive, enhancing the bleak ambience and slowing the reader down at the exact right moments. I once had a creative writing teacher who preached that good short stories slow down where it hurts. Writers, he said, should move through the action and events somewhat briskly, saving their lingering for the emotional beats that we as humans tend to dwell on in our minds in real life. That’s what this comic does, and it creates a thoughtful and utterly moving experience.

Overall: Mother - A Post Apocalyptic Tale is a rare comic that straddles graphic sequential storytelling and literary short fiction almost perfectly, using the strengths of both mediums to enhance ambience and add emotion. It all adds up to a poignant and thoughtful book, likely to move the audience on a deep level. 9.4/10

Mother - A Post Apocalyptic Tale

Mother - A Post Apocalyptic Tale
Writer: Eastin DeVerna
Artist: Dan Buksa
Colorist: Gab Contreras
Letterer: Shawn Daley
Publisher: Source Point Press
Koni never knew the color of the sun. It was time for her to join her mother, Asha, on her first carry out into the wastelands. They were to bring materials for water filters to the dying village of Vine Ayre, but with only seven days' time, could they make it through their unforgiving, dead world? Could Asha shield her daughter from burning in the rain? Could a mother keep her daughter safe? A harrowing and heartfelt post-apocalyptic tale set in the world of The Runner.
Release Date: Nov. 25, 2020

Read more great comic book reviews!

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