"Middlewest's" teenage angst is at front and center

Abel, the young protagonist at the forefront of writer Skottie Young's and illustrator Jorge Corona's new comic book series Middlewest, is a scrawny teenager dealing with several personal issues.  For one, his dad's an angry, alarm-clock-throwing patriarch whose wrath the boy feels firsthand when he oversleeps his Saturday morning's paper route routine.  Abel's friends, a trio of video-game-playing, bicycle-riding shoplifters, also pressure him into stealing from the local convenience store.  And then there's The Wind, an arch-enemy the likes of Superman's Lex Luthor, a towering monstrosity who pierces him through his chest (after which he emerges with only a golden heart symbol on his T-shirt), and promises to be a long-term nemesis and a serious thorn in young Abel's side.

This first episode of Middlewest is instantly engaging, and full of imaginative, visionary artwork by Corona, which is complimented by the coloring of Jean-Francois Beaulieu.  Young promises to keep surprising us in the ensuing issues, and even though he doesn't answer every question we may have (who, exactly, is Abel's pet fox, and why is it able to talk?), this serial seems poised for awe and wonder, and perhaps it's leading to the same thundering conclusion as Image's recent God Country series.  The storm has just began, and I can't wait to see its path of destruction.
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