Review: Toxx
Cover art: Adrien Bonilla @adrianBcomics
What does it mean to be human in a world that left humanity behind long ago?
Claire is pregnant, and there are complications: the Earth is a radioactive dystopia filled with ferocious mutations and everyone else on the planet is sterile. The tiny miracle inside her has made her a target...
Thirty years previously the ozone layer failed and solar radiation flooded the world, killing most living things and transforming the rest into horrific monsters. Worse, fending off the hungry wildlife is only delaying the inevitable; eventually everyone succumbs to the destabilising effects of radiation poisoning.
Our heroine lives in an underground town where she works as part of a team called the Relic and Toxx Scavengers (R.A.T.S) who make hazardous visits to the surface to forage for essential supplies. Once her condition is discovered, however, Claire herself becomes an invaluable commodity to be traded...
TOXX by writers Evan Carothers and Eric Palicki, and artist Ben Worrell is a gritty tale that blends the mutie-stalked Cursed Earth of Judge Dredd with the high stakes damsel-with-child-in-distress drama of Children of Men. The life of Claire and her unborn child are on the line as they become the prey for some very unpleasant predators.
Worrell gives us rough-hewn characters and fever dream mutants, highlighting the claustrophobic horror setting of the story. The reader delights in the gruesome array of monstrosities but there is also an ever present note of pathos; these terrifying apparitions were once human and are just as much victims as the ones whose lives they threaten. All of the above are equally trapped in the same dying landscape.
The clock is ticking for everyone, but for Mom time is running out even more rapidly...
TOXX #1 + #2 on Kickstarter
See also: The Ignis Quadrant
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