Little Bird: The Fight for Elder's Hope by Darcy Van Poelgeest

Illustrated by Ian Bertram, colored by Matt Hollingsworth

Little Bird's village comes under attack from the American Empire, but her mom has a great plan: squirrel her away until the violence is over, then set her on freeing a great warrior named Axe.  Axe will save the people, and save the North, aka Canada, the last bastion of resistance against the Empire.  Little Bird's family lineage is not what she was originally led to believe, and the Bishop who's coming after her now has more secrets than all of them combined.  

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I originally pounced on the opportunity to read this book because it won an Eisner Award for Best Limited Series, and nominated for 2 other categories, but I was left disappointed that this edged out other cool stories.  This story leaves much to be desired.  I was starting to think halfway through that I had missed another book somewhere before this, like this was actually volume 2, because of the lack of world building overall.  There were so many things we were just supposed to "go with" and not question or care to figure out.  There is something affecting the populace negatively, but I'm not entirely sure what.  There was nothing to indicate why the Christian Church was what fueled this evil Empire.  

The art is very psychedelic and full of squiggly guts in every panel.  Someone gets shot in the arm? guess what, intestines leak out.  

There is lots of violence, cussing for the sake of cussing, lots of gore, murder, and nudity.  Image rates this for mature, and I probably wouldn't put it in a high school collection.

Sara's Rating: 4/10
Suitability Level: Adult

This review was made possible with a digital reader copy from the publisher through Edelweiss.

Publisher: Image Comics
Publication Date: October 22, 2019
ISBN: 9781534313453 (Hardcover)

Tags: Rating: 4/10, Suitability: Adult, Comicbooks, Surrealism, Dystopian, War, Image Comics