3 out of 5

I’m not sure we’ve exactly seen this from an indie, creator-owned book before: this isn’t a reboot, but it is, essentially, taking Wild’s End back to the start, just in another area and with another crew of anthropomorphs, and not giving it a subtitle or new volume number – this is just Wild’s End. It might as well be a legit new #1.

But I’m glad this wasn’t the #1, because it just doesn’t land the same way as the original with either its cast or setting, now moved to a seaside town and a ship’s crew. Dan and Culbard do a great job of establishing all of the principals with dialogue and animation, but there’s something too performative at the same time: the previous Wild’s End could parallel a stiff-upper-lip mentality against the oddity of an alien invasion, and these are more working-class folk – deckhands, reporters – all sporting very overdone accents and rather one-note motivations. Culbard is also working with expanses and structures that are too open or too large scale for his style: even from the first book, it exemplifies the (to me) most distracting parts of his art, with flat, geometrical structures for backgrounds, overly digital coloring / textures, and no “solidity” – character models float; animate does not seem to effectively interact with the inanimate. So it doesn’t so much feel like we’re caught up in the adventure, and rather just watching it at a quiet remove.

Because the central quirk is still intriguing, and moreso because these creators don’t slip below a baseline of quality – Dan’s pacing and plotting are still sharp; Culbard’s page design keeps the narrative moving – I don’t mean to suggest that Wild’s End is a bad book at all, just underwhelming, and especially in comparison to what came before. Dan might’ve been aiming to avoid that comparison by not giving it a subtitle and etcetera, but then I’d want there to be a bit more gravity to the story; instead, there’s kind of an inherent understanding that we’ve read about the lamppost-looking aliens elsewhere, and thus revelations related to their takeover are delivered with half-stepped enthusiasm.

Coming at the story from a different angle is a great way to extend the universe. But something like Fear the Walking Dead comes to mind – at the outset, there isn’t going to be anything directly, differentially notable. But I do trust Dan, and this series, and I’d absolutely be happy to give the newly introduced crew time to establish their own foothold in this world.