To The Death: Forged By Fire (Prequel)

 

Simon Furman (w) Geoff Senior (a)

For those of you who have started following the story To The Death in the pages of the new British comics anthology Shift this one shot prequel is a must buy for the background material it contains. This is an "American sized" comic book but with a distinct difference. It's printed in a landscape format making for an interesting experience.

Simon Furman is famous for his highly successful run on Transformer comics which I have to admit I have never read not being of the right generation for the toys or comics but I might get around to sampling a couple one of these days after all the movies were fun. His creation To The Death is actually something that needs to be appreciated by a wider audience than just the small British comics community that still exists.

To The Death is a tale set in a dystopian future where war has become an income stream for one huge all encompassing company known as Tri-Corp. The world is divided by capitalism gone mad with ever widening gaps between the poor and the rich. War and expansion of the company's interest are at the centre of earth's existence and you play along or fall.

This tale sets up the main protagonists with Aleksey Dryagin being the central "hero" to this violent tale of war. In this first instalment we get to meet the full team of which Leone, the Wetwork Specialist, Bette Larsen the anti-authority figure and sociopath but good soldier Josiah Kraken appear to be the most important. 

The reader also discovers the war is with a species whose living ships spew lava on the earth fleet, but who is the aggressor here? First contact with a war-fleet hardly seems to be the way to go about business.The battle is afoot and we see in this adventure why Aleksey becomes the hero he is seen by and why by issue two of Shift someone is trying to kill him.

The launching of Shift in the middle of this damned pandemic is a brave move and the comic which I have reviewed twice on this blog is well worth picking up and supporting. Get this and the first two issues from the link below. You won't be disappointed. Shift is published every five weeks.

Rating: 5 Stars (Highly Recommended)

Available from: theshift.store