A man called Walter Willem seemingly dies, hit by a train. In an instant, he finds himself in the middle of a war straight out of Tolkien’s mind fought by warriors and soldiers from different eras. It’s an anachronistic bash against dark creatures that are after a fearless and beautiful warrior who seems to be the best of the bunch from the side of good. All is explained by a flying guide that leaves out a lot of key information for someone who just made it into the battlefield.

And that’s it. This is as much as you know, in broad strokes, about Vault’s new comic End After End in its opening issue. It’s one of the many strengths of this first chapter of the story and it’s smartly put together within a sea of questions that’ll surely but slowly reveal their answers in subsequent entries.

Written by Tim Daniel and David Andry with art by Sunando C and colors by Kurt Michael Russell, End After End finds a powerful narrative force in the concept of vagueness, in doing away with exposition so the reader can feel the same kind of confusion and displacement the main character does. The story, as summed up above, presents itself as an adventure playing out in real time without the customary time jumps we’ve come to expect to get from point A to point B. If anything, it stays in point A and makes the reader live in the story’s moment.

It’s a curious thing, time and pacing in comics. Volumes of information can be contained within a single panel, with or without words, but the presence of expository text can keep one from taking in all the things in them. Intentionally playing into vagueness, then, can put a requirement upon the reader to dig even further into each element present in the comics page to find any sort of clue as to the many questions the narrative puts in place. This is the genius of End After End. Daniel, Andry, and Sunando C manage to keep complete control of the pacing of the story by promoting a full reading of each page to hunt for any possible of hint as to what the hell the war at the center of it all is about.

In the absence of information, Daniel, Andry, and Sunando C offer characters with an abundance of personality that anchor the story’s perspective. There’s a palpable sense of discovery that main character Walter embodies that helps to heighten the setting’s sense of scale, doing an impressively quick job of placing us in a grand fantasy war scenario that’s yet to be fully revealed. A lot of this is owed to Walter’s guide, Grink.

An unreliable old man with fairy wings that thrusts a sword and shield into the new foot soldier’s hands, Grink helps to set the tone and sprawling nature of the event early on by being constructed as a pragmatic and urgent voice that offers a lightning fast introduction to the conflict at hand. Sunando C’s design for Grink has a sense of Dungeons & Dragons to it that makes the character come off as familiar and reliable. It’s a great example of how much weight characters are given so they can push the story into different places without being heavy handed.

The same applies for the protagonist and the other soldiers fighting in the background. Everything that’s present in a panel feels necessary to it, purposeful. It invites repeat readings in the hopes certain details missed on the first read become more visible the second or third time around. I would suggest to pay special attention to the soldiers fighting the war and the time periods they represent. It might be crucial to unlocking a few secrets as new issues come along.

Kurt Michael Russell’s colors are surprisingly restrained in parts and explosive in others, creating an environment that is fantastically nightmarish. Big set piece sequences benefit from this as they capture the realness of war despite the fantasy setting. There’s a very real sense of danger here and it makes you fear for Walter and his guide’s safety. Essentially, the colors do more than their part to help tell the story and add even more storytelling dimensions.

In a way, End After End #1 feels like the introductory level of a big budget AAA video game. It drops you right in the middle of the action so you can figure everything out as you go along. The creative team are all on the same page for this, producing a finely tuned narrative that begs to be expanded upon. All of this to say that, for a first issue, End After End #1 is a masterclass in how to start a new series.

Script: Tim Daniel and David Andry Art: Sunando C Colors: Kurt Michael Russell
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10
Recommendation: Buy and read several times. Then sit back and think about it.

Vault Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE review copy

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Purchase: TFAW – Zeus Comics – comiXology/Kindle