Origins #2 Review

Writer: Clay McLeod Chapman / Artist: Jakub Rebelka / Boom! Studios There are a lot of post-apocalyptic stories out on the market. There are a fair number of stories of robots becoming caretakers for remnants of humanity. And Origins strives to try and carve out its own niche, and it slowly is beginning to establish the groundwork to do so, but the second issue feels like it’s just a little too slow to get up and running.

Origins #2 continues the two-pronged narrative of David and Chloe between the “Now” in the distant, distant future and the “Then” of the not-quite as distance future. Chapman does provide a concrete 989-year time difference between the two framing device which does accentuate how the circumstances have somehow grown more dire since the original technological apocalypse. There are hints at complicated moral philosophy questions and meditations reckoning with one’s legacy and inheritance, but it never quite gets there in a way that feels efficient. That critique aside, the comic does and absolutely incredible job of telling its parallel narratives and is a perfect showcase on how creative teams can uniquely leverage the comic book media to tell stories in a way that couldn’t be done in other forms of media. Rebelka’s art alongside Delpeche’s colors do an exemplary job at distinguishes the eras, while also feeling a definite unity in their shared world. All of the sci-fi elements work incredibly well, it’s just that the components are a little more interesti…