Created/Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Piotr Kowalski
Color by Brad Simpson
Lettered by Simon Bowland
Logo Design by Gary Bedell
Edited by Mike Marts and Christina Harrington
Published by AfterShock Comics in August 2021.
. . .
"WORSHIP ME. GIVE ME YOUR ECSTACY OF TREMBLING. YOU ARE NO LONGER YOUR FATHER'S. YOU ARE MINE."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Here we have a 48 page one-shot comic book called God of Tremors. It's in an oversized format more like a magazine than your usual single comic book issue. It tells a story complete unto itself that does not require you to have read thousands of pages of prior continuity nor will you need to be rigorously drilled in the minutiae of lore and backstory in order to understand the characters, the setting, and/or the ideas it explores. It's kinda like catching an old episode of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. If you've never read a comic book before in your life, God of Tremors would still be comprehensible. It's possible that it could be someone's first experience of a comic book.
God of Tremors is about a sixteen year old British boy at the end of the 19th century who finds himself oppressed by the forces of religion, social conformity, and masculinity. His father's a fanatical Christian priest who believes that women should be the slaves of men, and that all sexuality outside of baby manufacture is a mortal sin. Never mind that dear ol' dad likes to furtively beat his dick to softcore lesbian-themed erotica. Hey, the geezer mortifies himself for his own lusts by lashing himself across the back, so, y'know, dude is consistent. Dad also likes to exorcize lust demons from his teen son by binding his arms at night when he goes to bed and whipping the kid without mercy at the least sign of resistance. The son knows this is a fucked-up, unjust situation, but what can he do about it? The young man stumbles across a possible solution deep within a mysterious forest: a bug-eyed leering statue of some forgotten deity that looks like a Jack Kirby monster. The statue speaks to the tortured teen, offering visions of the power of sexuality and Nature, and thus plants the seeds of resistance . . .
God of Tremors encompasses big ideas and brutal drama within a tight three act structure. The art evokes conflicting spaces of oppression-offices, churches, dormitories, mansions, bedrooms-and liberation-the forest, the domain of the Kirby monster god, the imagination. I especially enjoyed the way the forest comes alive whenever the power of the mysterious statue is in full effect. Ultimately, our teen protagonist is himself the battlefield for powerful forces that desire to shape him this way and that. Will the young man find his own way? Is he just a product of grinding evolutionary-dialectical processes with little to no free will of his own?
All this . . . in a comic book of all things!
What a world . . .
