Comic Title: Thumbs #1
Publisher: Image Comics
Story: Sean Lewis
Art: Hayden Sherman
Cover: Hayden Sherman
Image Comic’s Thumbs is yet another stark interpretation of our bleak and oppressive future under the thumb of manipulative oligarchs, homicidal fascists, and overzealous luddites. If it seems like I’m laying it on pretty thick, so does Thumbs. Award winning creators Sean Lewis and Hayden Sherman’s new title about gamers secretly radicalized as a tech mogul’s private insurgency, Thumbs takes itself very seriously. And while it muses about how disaffected western youth have been swept blindly into a cultural proxy war, I struggled to find any sense of what protagonist Charley “Thumbs” Fellows ever actually wants for himself. Then again, that sense of aimlessness is probably the point.
Charley isn’t a hero. He isn’t the best at anything, though his “Thumbs” moniker is derived from his talent for the video game Fortress. His absentee parents spent so much time working that he and younger sister Tabitha were practically raised by the nanny app, MOM. In fact, for many working class families in Charley’s America, this seems to be the norm. There is minimal talk of conventional education, of friends or extended family, or of aspirations for adulthood. Charley’s dystopia is devoid of any semblance of community or social “normalcy.” Despite this somewhat incidental seclusion, Charley’s skills merit induction into a secretive training enclave, Fortress Victory, designed and funded by altruistic tech wunderkind Adrian Camus to forge tools for his war. A war that eventually finds Charley severely injured and in a medically induced coma.
For all the warnings and cynicism Lewis brings to the table here, the absence of any contrasting levity speaks far more loudly. The dour narrative is as bleak and monochromatic as the art, which grounds the exposition in a harsh and ugly world. That isn’t an indictment of the quality of Lewis’ writing or Sherman’s visual world-building at all. It’s simply an observation on Thumbs earnest and discerning consistency. Is Thumbs narrative well conceived and paced? Absolutely. Is the art immersive and evocative? Utterly, save for one or two panels that are a touch too cluttered to easily follow the action. But like any good dystopian yarn, especially at the beginning, the reader comes away asking thought-provoking questions and wanting more of the frenetic action. Hopefully this initial five issue run will continue to build on the established tension and explore Charley’s very personal trauma.
Christian Davenport
cable201@comicattack.net
