Publisher: Image Comics
Released: September 12th 2018
Received: Own
Issues: Oblivion Song 1-6
Rating: 
Oblivion Song is a new series from Dark Horse, it’s written by Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead, Outcast, Invincible), and the artwork is by Lorenzo De Felici (Lukas, Lukas Reborn) and Annalisa Leoni (Orfani Le Origini).
The series is pretty much about a post-apocalyptic Philadelphia, but not in the way you’d expect. You see, it was only Philadelphia that was affected in this case. 300,000 people went missing in a single day. In their place were hundreds of monstrous creatures. That was a decade ago, and the city is still reeling from it.
This was a fascinating start to a series. I love how I was immediately pulled into the world due to the bright colors and scenery. The action oriented scene didn’t hurt, either. What kept me reading though was the intrigue. Oblivion Song isn’t like anything I’ve read before, and I found it impossible to predict what was going to happen next.
Nathan was the perfect character to carry this series. It was clear right from the start that there was more to him than met the eye – that he was carrying some extra baggage about the event. And frankly, based on how the event was described, that wasn’t hard to believe. I imagine everyone in that city knew somebody that vanished. And if they were really lucky, they also knew somebody that had been found and saved.
Not that it’s been happening often, lately. Maybe it’s the lack of resources and trips, but fewer and fewer people are being rescued from…that place these days. I can see why the city would despair of any hope. It had been ten year, and the rescue rates are dropping. Add that to the reports of the survivors…and I get why people would assume that there wouldn’t be many more left, if any at all.
I love how there were so many expectations made about the world that both sides live in, and how they all seem to be wrong. It’s an interesting mess that Nathan, and the rest of the people, have found themselves in. I’ll be curious to see how it all gets sorted out in the long run.
The artwork is probably my favorite part of the series, thus far. It’s absolutely striking, with liberal uses of colors. Best of all, the use of color immediately implies the location. The more red and orange the page is, the more it implies desert, right? In this case desert is more of a destroyed zone; an area that used to be city but it now nothing but dead things. Likewise the greenery immediately tells us when we’ve hit the move alive parts of the Oblivion – the parts outside of the transported city. The change is sudden and drastic, but it fits perfectly with the way the event was described. It’s perfect.
I know that there’s going to be at least one more volume for this series (possibly significantly more than that, based on Kirkland’s track record with series lengths), and I honestly can’t wait for the next one to come out. A cover has already been released for it, so we’re getting there…
