As goofy, fantastical, hyper-realistic, and chaotic as The Weatherman is, Jody LeHeup and Nathan Fox ground the characters in real, heightened emotions. When a gun is put to one of the character’s heads, they don’t grit their teeth. They experience true, genuine fear. They have no idea how that moment will end for them. This isn’t a story about heroes or villains, this is a story about people caught up in events that push them to their limits. In this case, the event is trying to track down who blew up Earth, so that it doesn’t happen to another populated planet. There are layers and levels to that, but this is terrorism on a planetary scale. It’s enough to push even the most trained warrior to their limits.
The warrior in question is Amanda Cross. She’s a government anti-terrorist operative on a mission to recover the information to stop another deadly attack. She has in her custody Nathan Bright, a popular weatherman on Mars. What Nathan Bright has to do with the terrorists and why Amanda Cross has him, I won’t say, only that, because the story is just as much character driven as it is story driven. Watching how these characters deflect off each other is in large part why the series is, so far, really exciting and entirely unpredictable. Issue three introduces us to some other colorful characters that will only make survival that much more difficult.
These characters also expand the completely absurd nature of the sci-fi world that Amanda and Nathan inhabit. It’s our reality on steroids. It’s our reality hanging to the final, untethered threads of a rope. If LeHeup and Fox weren’t so good at giving us characters to hold onto, their creation would be tossed into the oblivion of nonsense. Budding writers and comic creators, lovers of sci-fi, and those who like something refreshing and original, take note: Read The Weatherman.
Creative Team: Jody LeHeup (story), Nathan Fox (artist), Dave Stewart (colors), Steve Wands (letters), Sebastian Girner (editor), Tom Muller (Designer)
Publisher: Image Comics
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