In an era where the top two comic book publishers are owned by Warner Bros. and Disney, making an independent graphic novel is not easy without the money and man power to push a great story into the public eye. It takes a good story to get us here at Angry Web interested and Paul Salamoff (Logan’s Run, Vincent Price Presents) has given us just that. For someone who has been reading every issue of DC Comic’s, I found Salamoff’s new graphic novel a refreshing page turner.
We are all familiar with some of the greatest super hero teams like The Avengers, The Justice League and the X-Men. Salamoff introduces us to a brand new group of heros who call themselves Team War Hammer…then kills them off in the first few pages of his new graphic novel, “Discord”.
“Discord” introduces us to Team War Hammer as they save the crew of The International Space Station II from an attack by the story’s villain, Sinew. When they stop the attack and proceed to head home, they realize there is something wrong with their ship and end up crash landing on an alien planet.
The planet’s inhabitants, The Xyreem, are not able to save Team War Hammer from the fatal crash but do what they can by resurrecting Chromatic using parts from what’s left of the dead. This Frankenstein assembly allows Chromatic to use the powers of his fallen teammates and, inevitably, creates a single, more powerful superhero.
Though the bottom line concept of this novel is great, it is the character development that makes “Discord” so wonderful. Imagine being constructed of different body parts like some sort of monster. When you go back home, how would your former teammate’s family accept you? How would your own family accept you? These are the battles Chromatic has to face and as a reader, you just can’t help but turning the page and reading on.
I found Salamoff’s writing to be extremely magnetic and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. The art was solid, and illustrator, Giuseppe D’Elia, had a good handle on making the action scenes exciting while keeping the emotional scenes emotional.
This is a great graphic novel for anyone who is into sci fi or simply likes a good character story. I could easily imagine this as a movie and even feel there is room enough for Chromatic to have his own comic series in the future. It’s always nice to support the independent comic scene and it’s titles like this that allow it to stay relevant.
You can check out more of Paul’s work on his site or on his Facebook page and read more about “Discord” on the publisher’s site. Also, be sure purchase your own copy of Discord on Amazon.
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