Written by Shaun Manning
Illustrated by Anna Wieszczyk
Lettered by Ed Brisson
A small sleepy quiet Nebraska town has a small tiny problem beyond the boredom of High School. Hell Nebraska is about a small town transformed into hell on earth, and the attempts to stop it from happening. A high school student named David, and two FBI Agents are hot on the trail of a person who has magical powers that will turn a small desolate part of Nebraska into a hot a spicy place for all the murderers, rapists, and abusers out there, because hell did not really exist. The intersection of student, the FBI, and a man posing quite well as Satan have a rendezvous with insanity in this comic book, which has a lot of promise as the story line progresses through the process. What makes this even more interesting is that they use the private prison system as the back drop on this series. How do you stop a private prison system that technically is not doing anything against the law, but has put the prisoners into literal hell? The metaphorical issues raised by the comic book series are pretty awesome, is there really a law about keeping a prison just a tad too hot and making prisoners uncomfortable? Is isolation in Hell any different than isolation in say Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison? Have we managed to create our own hells on earth anyways?
There is a lot of potential in this story line so it will be so worth it to see what they do with the story line outside of the Zero issue which I just read. Anyways how do you stop a prison system that uses techniques that have been available since the inception of Gitmo? Would the law and order population really have a problem with that, or are we down to a couple of “bleeding heart liberals” as the comic book interprets that would have a field day with this one? This comic raises some interesting questions about not just the idea that a small town in Nebraska gets turned into a literal hell on earth, but how do we stop it if we should choose to do so later on? Can a teenager save the world from what could spiral out into a disaster of major proportions as sinners are committed into a system that for all intents and purposes promises punishment of biblical proportions on this green Earth? Again there is a lot of awesomely cool stuff that can happen here, and issue zero is a nice set up to the entire story line that will follow on from here.
The art work is interesting; it has a real Anime feel to it, but is also in line with some of the more modern styles of drawing. This is a nice mix of styles that looks awesome on screen. The coloring is muted throughout the comic book with almost a pastel feel to it that counter balances the grim story line very nicely. The story line is simply awesome, and highly enjoyable to read, with a lot of places for people to wander around and think about what is going to happen next. The flow is nice, the lettering is very easy to read, and overall the authors have gone to a lot of trouble to make this an outstanding example of an independent comic book. Needless to say I am very happy with the comic book, so yes, this gets the five of five stars rating, but you also will want to see if you can find a physical copy to add to your comic book collection. This one is worth collecting and keeping in physical format because I think it is that good.
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