From Monkeybrain Comics, Michael Moreci, Drew Zucker, Frank Barbiere, Jack Davies, and Tim Daniel.

 

Monkeybrain comics was launched in the summer of 2012, as a creator-owned platform for quality digital comics. Since then it has earned the praise of IGN and the Onion A.V. Club, as the “premiere destination for high-quality digital comics.” This summer, the company goes print, with a few select titles, but before then, they bring us Michael Moreci’s new comic western, Skybreakers.

This title marks the fourth project Moreci has planned to release this year. He recently launched a Kickstarter project with brothers Steve and Tim Seeley to bring the world Mini Comics Included. I would argue that Michael Moreci has earned the nickname, “the franchise” and with Skybreakers, it certainly seems earned. With names like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and James Patterson running amok in the world, Michael Moreci is a franchise that you can count on!

Skybreakers is Moreci’s venture onto the western stage, in stark violence, and clear admiration to the American time period. This comic caries the spirit of Deadwood with it and flings it into a brutal world that is part Walking Dead and part A History of Violence. The black’s and white’s serve the story well, as throwback to television’s early history, creating a kind of benchmark to rate the past. Whether there is purpose to that or not, the lack of color facilitates a time period that wasn’t yet evolved enough to bring the western to a truly accurate stage.

The opening panels detail the botched murder of a man, who rises out of the grave he’s being buried in to kill his would-be murderers. Moreci details this with a stunning open monologue, and a character who has taken a very different path than the one that was taught to him. Drew Zucker’s art captures the beauty of this brutish world; at the open of the comic is a beautiful landscape of mountains and forests against the murderous acts occurring. Zucker also captures individual moments with the boldness that Vince Locke did in A History of Violence. By the end of the carnage, he leaves one man alive to send a message and introduce the reader to Skybreaker, a half Native-American Christian. From there we are thrust into a nearby town, where a man by the name of Cutter rules by violence. This town is painted as a place where you can trust no one; the greatest example of this is when recent widow, Donna, is escorted home by someone clearly unwanted. As a man comes to her aid, she makes it clear with a gun shot that she needs no one to protect her.

The issue closes with Skybreaker, involved in a stick situation with a familiar face, but also a familiar situation if you’ve read Moreci’s work in the past.

Skybreakers is a brilliant presentation born in the American past. An unrelenting, fierce period, that has enemies on all sides, and has taken until now to be represented properly in popular culture. Moreci embraces all that this world has to offer and does so with a brilliant partner at his side in Zucker. If you’re a fan of Moreci, you know that he doesn’t play his cards up front, there is more in store, and surprises ahead that you won’t see coming. By the end of this issue, Monkeybrain comics has another masterpiece on its digital shore!