Staff Picks (January): The Only Living Boy Volume 1 — The Patchwork Planet

David Gallaher (Hulk: Winter Guard, Green Lantern Corps) and Steve Ellis (Iron Man, Lobo, & Green Lantern) have brought their creator owned project The Only Living Boy to comic shops at last! A sprawling adventure fantasy, amnesiac Erik Farrell is displaced in time and space to a planet not terribly dissimilar to our own. As this twelve-year old fights and flees through ruined cityscapes and abandoned subway tunnels, pieces of his memory begin to filter into place, but even those shards of thought are not enough to make heads or tails of the world around him. To the reader, the buildings and landmarks are instantly recognizable (especially to those readers old enough to recognize Simon & Garfunkel’s song of the same name set in the same city), but for Erik, his quest for identity remains a driving force in this fish-out-of-water fantasy.

Reminiscent of the comic series Flash Gordon, the "Big Bad" in Only Living Boy has cobbled together a realm of disparate and desperate peoples and lands stolen from other realms.  The tribes make war on one another, consume one another, and despise one another, when a unified front could topple the villain sitting at the center of the chaos. Erik, who is universally unaffiliated with any of the various species, has decided that the boy he is—building up from his blank slate foundation—would not hide from injustice.  This is only the first volume, but already we see his resolve as he begins his great journey to recruit a team, restore his memory, and slay the evil that subjugates this patchwork planet.

—Sarah Martinez

Publisher: Papercutz Item Code: JAN161608 Release Date: 03/30/16 SRP: $8.99