A.D. After Death Book 1 Review: A Surreal Experience
Snyder and Lemire craft a reading experience with A.D.: After Death
By Nolan P. Smith
Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire are easily two of the biggest names in the comic book industry. Snyder helped bring the Dark Knight to back to prominence, all while creating a name for himself with horrific tales like American Vampire, Severed and more. Lemire is a jack of all trades, writing and drawing a plethora of books, including Extraordinary X-Men, Black Hammer, Bloodshot U.S.A and more. Put these two titans together, and we get something very different than we are used to seeing at the comic shop. We get A.D.: After Death from Image Comics.
This book is not your traditional comic book: this is a hybrid of prose and sequential art, written by Snyder with beautiful painted artwork by Lemire. This first issue serves as more of a setup for the grand story, leaving us with very little info that attributes to the plot, at least from what we can see from book one. We see flashbacks of the childhood of our protagonists, Jonah, which is recreated in rich, detailed prose with just the right amount of visuals to move us along.
From his childhood to a quick shift to adulthood, something happens in between that creates the premise of this story: about curing death. But we only see panels of panic and discovery with no real connection to the who and what. But the experience found here is one that I think comic book fans would love to experience, as I did. This isn’t the kind of book you can read in 5 minutes and be done with. This will take some time to go through, and even more time to ponder and re-read.
I love the format this book is done in, with both the visual and the written storytelling being extremely strong, transporting us into very surreal situations. A.D.: After Death is something special: it is best to get in on the ground floor while you still can.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10.
This comic book review was created in conjunction with QBC Toys and More, a local comic book and collectible shop located in Victorville, CA. Featuring new comic books every week, collectibles, action figures, original artwork, and more, QBC has something for the pop culture lover in us all. You can find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/QBCToysandMore/.
