Originally published at Project Fanboy.
Publisher Website: Boom Studios
Writer: Chris Gorak, Pierluigi Cothran
Pencils: Damian Couceiro
Colors: Juan Manuel Tumburus
Number of pages: 24
Price: $3.99
Safety Content Label: PARENTAL ADVISORY – 15 years and older. Similiar to T+ but featuring more mature themes and/or more graphic imagery.
Publishers Blurb:
After cheating death, Nola Thomas wakes up alone in a deserted New Orleans hospital. Bruised, broken, and badly burned, she emerges from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina with one thing on her mind…revenge. From Chris Gorak, the writer/director of the critically-acclaimed film, Right at Your Door!
Reviewer Comments:
Okay, let me confess right away that I wanted this book to be good. I live close to New Orleans. I wasn’t here when Katrina hit, but my parents were here and stayed in their home northwest of the city on the other side of the lake when the storm came through. But even today, Katrina stands as a localized version of one of those newsworthy moments like Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination.
So, with high hopes I dove into this book, and it felt right. Everything from the architecture to the speech patterns to the general sense of outrage and anger after the storm reflected the mood of those turbulent times right after Hurricane Katrina. The color palette, with a pale green tint to it, displayed the design sense of the city, while the stark contrast between the sometimes jagged quality of the lines combined with old southern architecture reflected the gritty feel of this classic setting.
The speech patterns of New Orleans have a particular cadence to them, and it’s not what you read when Claremont wrote Gambit. The dialogue found in Nola might have some of the same words and phrases, but the writing team stays away from the extra flowery speech that found its way to the X-Men books. These are regular people from varying levels of education and socioeconomic status. Some of them are cruel, while others are good-natured, humorous people.
With all of this focus on the setting, let me say that this was also a great story. As mentioned earlier, anger plays a large role in this story, and what seems like a simple interaction between the lead character Nola and two police officers is backed by a world of pain. It looks on the surface like this would be a story similar to the Punisher book, but Nola is more vulnerable than Frank Castle. There are still elements of her humanity visible beneath her veil and cloak.
With breathtaking art and an authentic New Orleans backdrop, Nola is a revenge tale that you do not want to miss!
