Sword of My Mouth

Written by Jim Munroe
Art by Shannon Gerard

This is a book I've been looking forward to reading for some time now.  I originally read Munroe's brilliant 'Therefore, Repent!' when it first appeared a few years ago at TCAF, and I was blown away by his bizarre story of life after the Rapture.  In Munroe's world, in the period after all the good, God-fearing Christians floated up to the sky, magic suddenly started working, and people began to mutate or change in strange ways.  Some people grew fish scales or raven heads, while others had more subtle changes to deal with.  Angels appeared on the Earth, and did battle with the forces of evil, although in many places, they just became an occupying force.

In this follow-up book, which can be read completely on its own, we are given an interesting look at post-Rapture Detroit.  Now, Detroit is no stranger to having droves of people take off - this is where they invented 'white flight' remember, and the people living there are used to having to scratch by without the usual benefits of a functioning society.  In a lot of ways, this book serves as an overview of contemporary post-urban life.  There are people farming abandoned lots, 'locavore' farmers' markets, and commune-style living.  Only there's working magic.

The book is mostly centred on Ella, a single mother trying to look after her slightly strange baby Wilson.  When the building she's been squatting in burns down, she has to find a new place to live, and falls in with a collective of urban farmers.  There she works the farm, and starts to rebuild a life for herself.

Amid all this, there is the specter of Wilson's father, who eventually shows up on a mission from his commanders in the fight against the Angels in Chicago. The group also gets visited by Ursula, a witch from New York who is there to study their agricultural practices.  There is also a man claiming himself to be Famine, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who has some ideas about food pricing and undercutting the local producers.

As you can tell, this is not your typical comic book, and that's what I like most about it.  Munroe adds a ton of whimsical details, such as the dots painted on the houses on Heidelberg Street coming off the houses and floating around the city, but there is also this strong sense that he has a lot of other important details about this world worked out, and he is only giving us snippets of it.

Also unique is Shannon Gerard's artwork.  She doesn't really use panels, but instead layers the art in sections running down the page.  In some ways, her art reminds me of time lapse photography, as a person moves about the same image, stopping in places long enough to register on the film.  It's a little jarring at first, but you quickly become used to it.  Her lettering is like that too.  At first, I hated it, but it really grew on me as I proceeded through the book.

This is a project worth checking out, and I highly recommend it.  You can sample and purchase it here.