If you read the official plot synopsis for Wild’s End, and then you read the first issue, you may notice that the two have very little in common with one another. If you look closer, you might begin to suspect that what it describes seems like a pretty significant spoiler for the cliffhanger at the end of this issue. So, if you’d rather avoid that, I’d skip the plot synopsis altogether, and I’ll give you a spoiler-free rundown here.

Gullstone Harbor is a small sea town, somewhere around the 1930s, filled with anthropomorphic animals. A number of them are dogs, but there’s also a walrus, a badger, a rabbit, a pair of cats (who finish each other’s sentences), and many others. One of the town’s residents is the Skipper who owns and captains a small fishing vessel. Skipper is getting older which raises the question: Who will take over the boat when he retires? Roddy (a badger), his faithful first mate for many years, thinks it should be him, but Skip’s daughter-in-law, Flo, has also proven herself with years of service. Plus, she’s family, so maybe it should go to her.

As the crew are preparing for one last voyage with the Skipper at the helm, they find they’re taking on an extra crewmember—Skip’s degenerate screw-up of a grandson, the notorious Eddie Kettle. Surely, he couldn’t be the one Skipper wants to take over, right? The boy can hardly tie a knot, and everything he does seems to break more than it fixes. Then again, Skip is getting pretty senile. Who knows what he’ll do?

With all of this and quite a bit more weighing on them, the crew embark on their journey. And as days turn into weeks at sea, things get progressively stranger and progressively more hazardous for all of them. What’s going on? Will they live to make it back to Gullstone Harbor?

This is an odd comic to say the least, but it’s fun. The characters are quirky and interesting. The plot synopsis compares them to Wind in the Willows which seems accurate. The story has a very British feel to it, both in its sense of humor and in the characters’ dialogue. This first issue does a great job of setting up the world and the dynamics between the characters. I look forward to seeing what they do with that in the next issue.


Creative Team: Dan Abnett (written by, created by), I.N.J. Culbard (illustrated and lettered by, created by), Nik Abnett (additional material)
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
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