Written by Dan Wickline and drawn by Phillip Sevy this book is something I got on impulse, when browsing the new releases on Comixology today. I’d never heard of it before but the little promo sounded intriguing (and the lead character was Black, so…).

After a brief opening scene, which is somewhat confusing, the book is then told in flashbacks by the lead character, a man named Ray Adams. He appears to be in his mid-20’s/early 30’s, and lives with his elder mother and works as an IT guy at some large company. We see him head to work like everything’s normal, but when he gets there someone is having a problem with their computer, so Ray gets under his desk to fix it. But when Ray is finished and gets back up, everyone in the building has frozen. Meaning they’ve just stopped in the middle of doing whatever they were doing and aren’t moving, as if they’re doing the mannequin challenge. Ray very quickly realizes this isn’t some big prank everyone is playing on him when he looks outside the window and sees the chaos on the street, as apparently everyone in the city is also frozen and that includes people driving cars and buses at the time, and now there are dozens of crashes.

Ray then discovers that he can “unfreeze” people by touching them. A simple touch with his bare hand, on their bare skin, snaps them out of it, and the person he touched is once again mobile with no side effects or memory of being “frozen”. He uses his touch to revive three colleagues, a woman named Lisa, another named Daisy, and then their boss, a man they just call Mr. Ordway. They realize that only Adam’s touch works, none of the others are able to “unfreeze” anyone by touching them. But then Daisy, who is a few months pregnant starts feeling pain in her stomach, so they rush her to the nearest hospital where Adam unfreezes a doctor and a nurse, and they take her into an operating room and deliver the baby, which is still “frozen” as Ray’s touch only worked on Daisy and when she was unfrozen her body began to miscarry. This small group of people are now left to decide what to do next, including agreeing to vote before they decide whom Ray should unfreeze next. And it’s at this point that realize that this frozen effect is apparently worldwide, and the damage and deaths its likely causes could be in the millions…

Okay, quite a compelling first issue, not a whole lot of information, but the mystery helps as it puts us right in the shoes of Ray and the others, we’re just as clueless as they are. And the ending scenes conveys just the right amount of horror at the gravity of the situation which makes me want to see what happens next.

Chacebook rating: 5 STARS

AVAILABLE ON COMIXOLOGY