The Saviors #2

By James Robinson & J. Bone

After the first issue of The Saviors, many people had mixed reactions to this tale of a small desert town stoner discovering that some of his fellow local citizens aren’t exactly what they seem; they are lizard aliens in disguise. Even though the first issue did a great job of introducing and developing Tomas as the lead character the rest felt a bit flat but with issue two they expand the overall story and when you read issue one and two together it makes for a stronger start of this recently announced ongoing series.

First off, it’s a treat to have James Robinson writing a creator owned book. Even though he has a knack for writing golden age heroes while still being able to give them a modern twist, seeing him work on a series that has no relation to super heroes is refreshing and honestly long overdue. With issue two of The Saviors he presents us with a lot of the main plot of the story through the character Nate who seems to be part of a small fraction of humans trying to stop this group of shape-shifting aliens. Once Nate lays down a lot of the details to Tomas and they make a clever get away it feels like The Saviors is now set up quite well and keeps a reader interested in where the story will go, how do they plan to stop these aliens master plan and what that plan happens to be?

J. Bone has a fun cartoony style of art that fans of The Rocketeer might be familiar with and that others compare to the likes of Darwyn Cooke (whom he has previously worked with on many titles such as The Spirit). The one thing that was slightly jarring about his art upon reading the first issue of The Saviors was that it’s a black and white comic. There isn’t anything wrong with black and white comics but when you think of J. Bone’s work sometimes it makes you think of some his more brightly colored previous works that normally give you a very in-your-face feeling. So when reading the first issue it felt mildly disappointing, but I think by the end of issue two you see that the black and white art actually suits the story. If The Saviors were as brightly colored as some of J. Bone’s previous work it would actually hinder and take away from this story a bit, his simplistic approach to this series fits the story better in a black and white format.

This second issue of The Saviors when paired with the first actually work much better than being read separately. Both issue one and two should be read together because together they really give you a real solid feeling of what this series is about. It’s nice to have two creators who made their names working on mostly established characters team up to finally make an ongoing creator owned series that is all their own story. These first two issues were a good start but it will be interesting to see what these guys have in store for us as The Saviors progresses from here.