Really interesting! I'm super intrigued by this idea of the afterlife being run by a company and keeping track of all the people there. I love that Ernest Hemingway is one of the main characters! I want to know more and I'm definitely going to get the next installment.

The Life After is surely an interesting concept. Jude lives his boring life and the days keep repeating themselves until he picks up a handkerchief to give to a woman and that's when all hell breaks loose. Suddenly the world crumbles and Jude can see people's past. He ends up with Ernest Hemingway to some kind of hell trying to figure what is happening and what he even is and mostly, whether it's actually hell they are in. The idea is awesome, but mostly moving too fast with too much happening at the same time. I wish Fialkov would take his time with this, since the whole thing very original and intriguing. Hemingway was great and I'm glad he has a role in the comic and all the monster and whatnot. The pace is the only thing bothering really, since it makes this hard to follow, sadly so.

The art works well, although some of the angles are odd and messy. The dark colors look nice, but somehow I wished there had been more shading and layers. Same with the line art, which is thin. It's very sterile looking when there's hardly any variation. Art in itself is OK, well, except the faces mostly. They looks stiff and wooden compared to everything else. The eyes are lifeless too, which makes them hollow looking. The panels are a bit empty, since there's hardly any background, which is a shame. The art is not bad, though. It just would've needed more edge and depth to company the story better.

A fun graphic novel about an amnesiac and the, maybe, suicidal afterlife.

I really enjoyed part one. I thought it was a very interesting concept and the art fit the book well. It's like Wristcutters meets the Dead Zone meets They're Not Like Us featuring Ernest Hemingway. I definitely want to keep reading to find out what happens next.

A Little Deadpan Humor; I Liked That

Heroes caught between Heaven and Hell show up a lot in graphic novels, and I'm all for that. Gives an author a lot of room to stretch out and go epic. But sometimes those novels can get a little too earnest, dark, or, more commonly, heavy and cryptic. I mostly liked this version because it told a good and twisty story with a very generous share of tongue-in-cheek that actually complemented the story.

Our hero Jude finds himself in a purgatory/limbo halfway place, (we don't seem overly concerned with a strict theological distinction among the various levels and parts of the afterlife), and he finds that its denizens are unaware of who they are or where they are until he wakes them up. His touch both wakes people up and injures or destroys a variety of bad guys, which is, you know, handy.

Bottom line, Jude decides this halway place is unfair and cruel, and decides to mount a revolution of sorts. Now, with that basic thread of a plot we can have all sorts of sub-plots, and even if some of those threads go nowhere or are confusing, the main line holds everything together well enough that the story never becomes densely incomprehensible.

The best part is that Jude picks up an unusual crew of accomplices. Number one, of course, is a guy who was already awake when Jude first showed up - Ernest Hemingway. I know that shouldn't work, but it does. Ernest is funny, deadpan, tough, wise, and up for adventure and a fight, and is a really fine Yoda/sidekick character. Then we meet up with a tough cookie woman who Jude woke up by accident. She is a game addition. Toward the end we get hints of more allies to come. So this ends up being an ensemble sort of affair.

The halfway world is overseen by grey bureaucrats who monitor and interfere with the action, and they are played as a cross between Matrix agents and the Three Stooges, which adds to the snarky humor that underlies some of the action and plotting. As per usual, God is a bit distracted and doesn't like to get directly involved in the dirty work.

The drawing is sharp and nicely colored. Some of the big scenes are especially well drawn, and you always recognize the characters and know what's going on, which is always for the best in a book like this.

So, it's well paced, a little light, imaginative, (if a bit predictable), and overall engaging. I enjoyed reading it, which is, I guess, the main test. This Volume 1 collects the first five issues of the comic. There are two more collection Volumes, so expect a cliffhanger ending.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)