Andrew Dabb is a writer whose work we don't see nearly often enough. He's been keeping busy with the sporadically publisher Ghostbusters comics from 88MPH, but his past work showed greater strength when tackling darker and weirder material. Atomika certainly qualifies as dark and weird, and another word one could use to describe it is "ambitious." Dabb and creator Sal Abbinanti have constructed a completely different world in which science and the supernatural allowed for a radically different vision of the Soviet Union to arise. Sound familiar? It should. Atomika is easily comparable to The Red Star, which made such a big splash in the industry a couple of years ago. A more surreal tone here certainly makes for a different atmosphere in this new title, but it also makes for a need for greater clarity in the storytelling.
It's 1929 in Moscow, and in a world unlike our own, the Communist state has spawned a behemoth city that runs with mechanical efficiency. The State provides for the people everything they could hope for and much that they fear. A young boy learns much about the latter when he's separated from his mother and explores the bowels of the city, wher he discovers that ghosts and monsters help to run things just as the machines do. The boy is chased and hunted, and when he emerges, his mother stands firm to protect him.
Abbinanti's art reminds me a great deal of a cross between the styles of Tom (Grimjack) Mandrake and Paul (100%) Pope. He conveys the surreal, eerie and fluid qualities of the supernatural elements quite well, but perhaps he does so too well. I didn't get a strong sense of Moscow as a city here. The setting is clearly important here but not very well defined. The misshapen faces of the human characters robs them of a good degree of their humanity, making them seem as monstrous as the evil creatures lurking beneath the city. Abbinanti conveys the raw power and larger-than-life nature of the developing god creature at the heart of the story, though.
Dabb's matter-of-fact narration adds to the chilling quality of the story. The naming and description of the unusual creatures lying in wait deep beneath Moscow are inventive and effective. He also does an excellent job of conveying the cold, dirty struggle of life in this world.
The writer captures a mythic quality in his telling of the title character's origin. The majesty and fear he's meant to represent really shine through. Where the script goes awry is in a lack of detail. The meat of the story is as vague as the art, and while that might reinforce the sense of myth here, it also disconnects the reader from the story and characters. 6/10
