After a recent dip into European comics, I’ve decided this week to return to Americana. (Of course the story takes place outside the lower 48, so it may as well be another overseas book.) I read The Last Winter written by Larry Fessenden and Robert Leaver with art by Brahm Revel.

In the future, due to energy concerns, oil drilling has been authorized in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) region. But, in an effort to keep people happy, before any oil can be drilled companies must perform environmental impact studies to insure minimal damage to the environment. The story revolves around the small team performing the studies in remote regions of Alaska. As winter approaches, the oil company North Industries sends Ed Pollack to speed the studies up and prep for drilling. This leads to clashes with Jim Hoffman, the lead environmental impact analyst. In between various arguments about the need to work versus the need to protect the environment, strange things start happening and members of the team start dying. It appears that nature is fighting back against all the drilling. In the end, the remaining team members are just fleeing for their lives, chased by nature itself.

Originally, The Last Winter was a small independent film released in 2006. It went to DVD in 2008 and the comic was released for cross-promotion. Fessenden and Leaver did a great job of translating the screenplay to comic book form. The characters were very interesting and the authors managed to avoid many of the pitfalls of horror movie characters, namely the standard roles like hero, etc.

As a horror story this is very good. I would describe this as more of a ghost story, as opposed to a slasher or big monster horror story. One difference: in the film the “monster” isn’t shown. Since comic books don’t have special effects budgets, they were able to add in a monster where one doesn’t exist in the movie. While the monster was good, I can see the story being strong (or stronger) without a monster. Based upon the overall theme of nature fighting back, the monster imagined was worse than the actual monster drawn on paper.

I really enjoyed the art, too. The graphic novel uses three colors: black, white and, of course, blue… because of the cold. Revel does a great job of using each color to the max. Revel also did a great job with his panel work. Each page is jammed with panels which almost gives a feeling of claustrophobia, which is amazing considering the story takes places in snow field. Even more impressive, with all those panels Revel still managed to tell a clear and coherent visual story. Many artists just lump panel after panel, which makes pages exhausting. Revel made each page layout unique which made for a great read.

Overall, if you like good ghost stories then this is the book for you.

Visit Larry Fessenden and see his other movie projects here and check out The Last Winter movie website.

- David Lee