Buckhead #1

Buckhead #1

Boom! Box 2021

Written by Shobo

Illustrated by George Kambadais

Lettered by Jim Campbell

What strange secrets lie in the mysterious town of Buckhead, USA? Toba and his mother, a renowned scientist, have just immigrated to the US. But instead of living in the Big City like Toba always dreamed, they've moved to a sleepy little town in the Pacific Northwest called BUCKHEAD.

In the middle of the picturesque and pedestrian town, Toba discovers that things aren't as perfect as they seem... Toba and his newfound friends find a strange video game, a perfect replica of the town and its people. Soon Toba is on the run from men in black, with his friends brainwashed by microchips.

I make no bones about the fact that I am a huge fan of BOOM! Studios and their lines of books. This one sounded interesting to me and I knew I wanted to read it to check it out and I am glad I did too because the way this one starts off it promises to be the YA thriller that we’ve been waiting for. We open up with events that happened a year ago and if I’m not mistaken it is the event that leads Toba and his mother to relocate to the United States. I like this because we aren’t really sure what’s going on but it seems as if it contains both Archeology and Technology that we’ve never seen before and this sets the intrigue factor to high.

I am a fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information are presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a brilliant job establishing their personalities. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages introducing the characters, the story and the world they live in the more we want to see.

I am pretty impressed with the way that we see this being structured as well as how the layers within the story begin to emerge and grow. I am also liking the way that we see these layers open up new avenues to be explored. With a first issue there are plenty of avenues opening up before us and it’ll be interesting to see which ones are chosen to further explore. This of course also adds some great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward are impeccably handled.

The interiors here are more geared towards the all-ages market and that’s okay because it’s got this great solid linework with some nice varying weights being utilised to create the detail within the work that we see. We see some nice use of backgrounds here that expand and enhance the moments and work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story extremely well. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows an extremely talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a great understanding of how colour works.

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I really love the way that we see this playing out. How easily Toba makes friends and then how mysteriously they find what’s in the school as well as how he sees what happens that first night of school. It is a very quick paced story thus far and yet nothing seems rushed or glossed over so it’s extremely well paced. The writing is sensational and the characterisation is fantastic and the interiors here are expressive. All together this makes for a really interesting read and I’ve been hooked on what we see and I cannot wait to see what’s going to happen next.