Six weeks into the slow burn of the historic Arroyo Fire, a crew of women from an inmate firefighting program are risking everything on the frontlines when their newest recruit, a white-collar convict with a deep network of shady dealers, discovers they’re mere miles from her crooked former associate’s mansion. When she proposes a plan to abandon their duties and hunt for riches under cover of smoke and ash, the team must decide if they’re ready to jeopardize their one sure path back to normalcy for a shot at a score that would change their lives.
Dark Spaces: Wildfire #1 is written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Hayden Sherman, colored by Ronda Pattison and lettered by AndWorld Design for IDW’s new originals line.
Every summer growing up, wildfires were a very real concern for me.
I spent my childhood in a small farming community north of Salt Lake City. The area was a desert even long before climate change made the entire mountain west a tinderbox. That meant from July until September, we lived in wildfire season and wildfire country. It would happen quickly. We’d have a week of thunderstorms, a few days of intense heat to dry the brush out, then one last storm. A lightning strike in the wrong spot was all it would take.
My dad was a member of the volunteer fire department (Yes, that’s how small it was), and would often spend days out on the fire line. He would tell us stories not just of taking care of the fire itself, pushing back against the encroaching flames, but also of other dangers, such as animals that would flee for safety, right past the firefighters, only caring for-self preservation. All the stories I heard about close encounters with rattlesnakes started as wildfire stories.
Though I never had to evacuate and usually never saw the actual fire clear the ridge above our home, the fires were always very real and very frightening to me. So when I picked up Dark Spaces: Wildfire #1, all those feelings from my childhood came rushing back.
Snyder gets it here. Honestly, he could have told a story with the exact same setup, removed the heist and it would have been just as engaging. Wildfires are one of the most enthralling and dangerous features of the natural world. Knowing that human beings are so small in comparison makes our efforts to fight them seem so minuscule and pathetic.
And that’s what he does with his script. He makes these five women incredibly human — and their incarceration and their correctional officer make their circumstances even worse. They are a cancer patient, a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, a scapegoat and more. By the time the scheme is hatched, you feel for them. It’s not just a story about women vs. the elements, it’s a condemnation of the modern penal system and adds a layer of sexism to ensure we’re not just engaged, but cheering for them.
Sherman, meanwhile, is an artistic chameleon. They have a realism in their line that I haven’t seen in their work before. Their work is usually slightly abstract in the figures and backgrounds. Here that style is still present, but it’s in the layouts. They’re able to make the characters feel human and real, then get abstract and impressionistic in the layouts to convey the emotion in the script. It’s stunning work in a young career full of stunning work.
Pattison’s colors are fantastic. If you’ve ever been near a wildfire, you know that the world gets weird, and how colors change within the environment is a big part of that. Pattison captures that feeling, making the environment oppressive and warm. She also is able to transform the line art, taking Sherman’s pencils (like an early two-page spread) and adding reds, yellows and blues to shift it from great to breathtaking.
This is a story about the terrors of nature, and how they make the horrors of man seem so small in comparison. The story has barely gotten into the heist, but I’m hooked. This is a must-read book, and a fantastic launch for IDW’s new originals line.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
