Dandelion apocalypse
Great writing and even greater characterization leads to a highly enjoyable book. Matt Hawkins as always excels at presenting scientific themes to the amateur comic reader while Linda's art is amazing. Her characters facial expressions go toe to toe with her husband’s.
Although Matt's story moves through well known paces, it still manages to be fresh with characters both believable and likable. We see how mundane people try to manage this extraordinary situation (dealing with guilt or simple survival), while at the same time dealing with their private life's. This must be a challenge - not only to the characters themselves, but to the author, who manages to fit all this in just a few pages.
The biggest selling point in Matt Hawkins and Linda Sejic's Wildfire was for me how real to life all this was. A simple situation evolved into a cataclysmic event, where people with everyday life's - like you and me - had to somehow survive. All this was almost constant throughout all four issues.
-SPOILERS-
But then came the solution, which seemed kind of cliché, but still worked, because it was setup quit early in the first issue. But where it all felt apart to me, was how the responsible scientists ended with almost no repercussions or persecutions.
At the end it was like: "Yeah, you know, we are responsible for thousand dead, millions homeless, billions in monetary loss, but hey, now we work properly funded for the government".
At this point I have to say that I was beyond measure disgusted with those people I actually started to like since the first issue.
-SPOILERS END-
The book is a good reed, it is a Matt Hawkins book after all, it touches themes than might seem sci-fi to some, but are present real world concerns. The art by Linda is as always simply stunning, you cannot really credit the likability of the characters in full to Matt's writing, Linda's skill at drawing emotional characters is equally important.
But the ending... the ending is the reason this does not get 5 stars... but still comes recommended...
As a fan of Mass Effect and a fan of this creative team I would seriously ask for an extended ending DLC for Wildfire... and then the sequel… THE INSECTS… sounds dangerous… count me in!