BOOM! Studios’ CODA #1 is a Mind-Bending Kaleidoscope of Fantasy, Reality, and What Really Matters

Writer: Simon Spurrier /Artist: Matías Bergara/BOOM! Studios

What sweeter way to start your adventure (don’t call it a quest, don’t ever use the Q-word) than with a love letter? You know, one that you write while hungover…to your wife…who has been kidnapped. Sweet as pie. Welcome to CODA. The world that Simon Spurrier and Matías Bergara created in CODA is as sarcastic and cynical as it is beautiful and vast. Spurrier’s writing plays on the dichotomies found between our dreams of fantasy and the problems of reality. There is rampant drug addiction, genocide, and a twist that shows the depths of human depravity. All covered in Bergara’s glorious art and vibrant colors. The fantasy is real, so real it hurts.

This introductory mega-issue displays all the slime and splendor of a world driven by a magic that is almost dried up. The main character remains nameless and mostly silent, only revealing his true thoughts through the letter he will never send. He is reluctantly altruistic and this makes him relatable to all us broke folks who curse ourselves for having a conscience. While CODA #1 is mostly spent setting the scene and introducing all the players: there are three overarching problems that present themselves. Save your own, save the weak, or save the world. We’re 43 pages in and those goals are already in deep conflict. Our man is pretty quick to do the right thing in small scenarios. Extrapolating to a global scale isn’t so easy. To save his wife he must cripple the town t…