Jeremiah: Gun in the Water

    (Dark Horse, 2002)
™ and © Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

Hermann’s Jeremiah series has made sporadic appearances here since the ’80s, and it’s to be hoped that the current Showtime TV series will give the graphic novels another much-deserved chance at breaking into the American market. Going in, newcomers should know this supposed post-apocalyptic series is very much a Western — and not a Hollywood oater, either. It’s like a ’70s European-style post-Civil War story where the focus is more on character than slam-bang action.

The drifters, Jeremiah and Kurdy, take a backseat here to the strange family they fall in with: a family living on the edge of a bayou. It’s heavy on sweaty ambivilance and ominous portent, which is all to the good, since the mood is conveyed via the stunning art of Hermann. Too often in American comics coloring is just the last necessary step in comic-book production, but here it’s an essential part of the storytelling process. The color scheme is vital and varied, the greens of nature (wildly contrasting with a character’s red hair) moving to grays moving to blacks, with ominous shadowy figures appearing as little more than charcoal smears. This is comics at their best.

— S.A. Bennett
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