‘Echolands #1’ (review)

By J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman
with Dave Stewart and Todd Klein
Published by Image Comics

I wish I could say I liked Echolands, because it is, without a doubt, an absolutely gorgeous book!

Of course, the same could be said for anything and everything the book’s artist, creator, and co-writer, J.H. Williams III, has worked on in recent years.

Known for his colorful, ornate work on such titles as Promethea and Batwoman, plus a Sandman graphic novel, Echolands may be his best work to date.

Clearly a labor of love, as we are informed in the text at the back of the book, Williams has apparently worked this story out in his head since childhood and now co-writer W. Haden Blackman (also a Batwoman veteran) has helped him finally bring it about.

Brilliant colorist Dave Stewart has to be equally credited, as is often the case with Williams’ work, and ace letterer Todd Klein (a FB friend of mine) comes up with some unique lettering for various characters.

The problem with Echolands is that I have no idea what is happening.

As beautiful as it is and as intriguing as it is with its background of a futuristic world where all sorts of pop culture characters co-exist, we basically have a young blonde woman running from someone all through the book, getting caught a couple of times along the way. At one point our presumed heroine—it’s hard not to think of her as Little Red Riding Hood with weapons—uses the power of “the Red” to graphically explode the faces of her pursuers when cornered.

None of this is ever really explained to the point where the reader knows even enough to care what’s happening. Why is there a Frank Miller character in this panel? Is that a Moebius character there? Intriguing, but also very distracting, especially the cartoonier figures.

With all of the art taking up an unusual “widescreen” format, we really only get about ten story pages—amazing-looking story pages, mind you!

But that’s not enough.

Williams says he’s already up to issue six. I may want to revisit Echolands in a collected version down the line but I’m sorry to say issue one really doesn’t make me want to come back for issue two.