Lonely Receiver #1 is out September 2, 2020. — **Lonely Receiver #1** is out September 2, 2020.

By Jacob Cordas — Lonely Receiver #1 is a series that excels in its precision. No word or phrase is wasted. No panel could be replaced. Everything is exactly what it should be. Which makes writing a review about it near impossible. Precision in art is hard to quantify. To stare too long at the skill is to eventually erase the craft it took to make it. And this took so much craft.

Writer Zac Thompson (The Dregs, Come Into Me) channels the best parts of Alan Moore here. Like Moore, he expertly traverses through time, using the disorientation as part of the core tension mechanism of the issue. You are dragged along by your lack of knowledge. It takes an idea that at first glance seems like sinister reimagining of the film Her and instead makes it a beautiful mediation on relationships.

And like Moore, Thompson uses post story documents to savage effect. Most notably I kept returning to a line in an unspecified journal entry near the end: “Fuck her for I’m shaking.” It finishes a paragraph but could’ve been allowed to sit as its own. There is so much emotion and nuance buried in each and every sentence. I could take out so many more and clog this review with them instead of writing anything myself.

But then I would leave out the art. And the art is amazing.

Jen Hickman (Moth & Whisper, the Femme Magnifique anthology) is an artist I’ve been reading since their dazzling work on Jem and the Holograms. Here they take every technique they have been quietly perfecting and achieves mic drop after mic drop. Page after page is flawlessly composed. Whether it be the first page’s slow abstraction of the back of a head or the pitter patter of eyes in the middle of a later argument, nothing is wasted.

They color the book themselves making it clear, if it wasn’t already, that only Hickman should color their work. The majority of the book is made up of soft purples, pinks and blues. It creates an enveloping sadness, the scariest yet most honest depiction of self hate. The rare breaks into greens and blacks become gut punches that overwhelm the senses.

Simon Bowland (The Dreaming, Green Lantern: Earth One) provides the lettering on the book and he has so much that he needs to get right. There are a variety of different fonts, boxes, formats, scripts. It’s all just so much. And Bowland is able to make it all track*. I can easily read everything, even when I don’t want to.

Every person involved with this book brings their best. Every choice is weighted and considered. I don’t want to sit here and erase the magnificent work with my sad attempts at explaining it. I want you to go out and read it; see the clarity of focus, the precision of content, and the mastery of form for yourself.

Overall: Everything about this book works. Every creative choice is the right one. Every word and line perfectly placed. 10/10

*If I can go back to the Alan Moore comparison, while I love his Providence (it’s probably my favorite work by him) the journals at the end were often gruelingly difficult to read. This does a perfect job of walking the line between making it look like a human being wrote it and not making it take as long as it took to read the rest of the issue to read.

Lonely Receiver #1 - REVIEW

Lonely Receiver #1
Writer: Zac Thompson
Artist: Jen Hickman
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Publisher: Aftershock Comics
Price: $4.99
Catrin Vander, a lonely video producer, buys an Artificial Intelligence partner that's meant to bond for life. After ten years together, her holographic wife suddenly discon-nects without a warning. The breakup drives Catrin to the point of near insanity. She's alone for the first time in years and reeling from a loss she can't comprehend. Set in the new future, drenched in pastels and sunshine, LONELY RECEIVER is a horror/breakup story in five parts. Written by Zac Thompson (UNDONE BY BLOOD, THE REPLACER, HER INFERNAL DESCENT, No One's Rose, X-Men) and illustrated in color by Jen Hickman (MOTH & WHISPER, Test).
Release Date: Sept 2, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Lonely Receiver #1

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My name is Jacob Cordas (@jacweasel) and I am not qualified to do this.