Brink: Book Five

Brink

by Dan Abnett, I.N.J. Culbard (Illustrator)

The year is 2096 and Earth has been reduced to an uninhabited wasteland. What was left of humanity was evacuated into overpopulated space stations, or 'Habitats'. Nolan Maslow, a journalist working for The Herald, is investigating the death of HSD agent Brinkmann and the sect that has infiltrated the maintenance workers of Ludmilla Habitat. He will find out that even his most outrageous theories cannot encompass what is actually happening behind the scenes of the habitat.Taking place during the events of Brink Book One, this graphic novel adds extra layers to the story of Bridget Kurtis and her ongoing fight against the forces which are haunting the remains of humanity and driving them to madness.

Genres: Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 22, 2022

Reviews

[Alex Habgood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still enjoying Brink, but this one felt a bit more drawn out to me. Might be just because I found the journalist protagonist a bit unrelatable. That said, I do feel this this book probably had the darkest tone out of the books in the series so far.

[Paul Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

With four story arcs of Brink under their belts, Dan Abnett and I.N.J. Culbard spring a surprise by jumping back in time and setting Book 5 during the same period as Book 1. Until now the story has followed law officer Bridget Kurtis on a long slow descent into the inner politics and occult overtones of life on the artificial space stations housing what’s left of humanity, but the new collection from 2000AD goes back to the inciting incident that put Kurtis on that path in the first place: a shooting incident which, it turns out, was also witnessed by an investigative journalist named Nolan Maslow.

So now the journalist follows the cop’s trail and wanders into a separate but parallel set of dangers, which lets Abnett repeat something of the trick he pulled off the first time round. Although Kurtis is glimpsed in the distance going through the same motions she did before, it’s Nolan that leads the reader through a carefully designed story of haves and have-nots, management and unions, the powerful and the little people. Less conventional forces lurk in the dark too: cults worshipping elder gods that might take a dim view of mankind’s presence, groups of true believers with differing ideas about what’s best for Homo sapiens. And in the background, something very bad has just happened to the planet Mercury, another disaster for an already nervous humanity, leaving all the characters in a state of uncertain tension. Like The Out, another of Abnett’s recent co-creations for 2000AD, Brink has the current real-world on its mind.

Abnett’s experiment with Brink has been to tell all this in long extended sequences which are 90 percent people talking to each other and 10 percent anything else, rather than the other way around – and even then the action is usually a blast of violence between characters who were just talking to each other. The influence of certain kinds of TV drama looks pretty clear, although Abnett takes the opportunity to discuss unionization and the reasons for organized labor at greater lengths than most TV series would go for.

At the same time Culbard’s art is an experiment of his own, working out how to make this operate on a page. Facial expressions are part of it, but posture, visual symbolism and inventive lighting effects are Culbard’s main tactics, plus a bold color scheme setting the blazing neon lights of commerce and pleasure against the dusty gloom of industrial plumbing and the men servicing it. Brink‘s sci-fi of workers and bosses, tension and madness, is a stand-out item on the modern 2000AD roster; but then it would be singular almost anywhere.

[Alex Sarll]

Continuing the uncomfortably relatable story of humanity's remnants going peculiar as they maintain a precarious existence in orbit around the uninhabitable Earth of the near future. It's one of the best of 2000AD's new batch, so it's less surprising here than it would be for fucking Skip Tracer or something to have the series go a bit Wire and suddenly switch our whole perspective; the cops, cults and corps we've been following until now are still present, but no longer in the foreground, where we instead get a closer look at the press and the unions. After the occasional longueurs in the previous volume, this is smart just in terms of keeping things from settling into a rut, but also gives us more very odd hints about what might actually be going on. And it remains a masterstroke that where most series would still be content to deploy dark gods from the dawn of time as a big reveal, as if unaware of how commonplace that idea has become over the course of the past century of weird tales, in Brink they still seem to be more of a feint or misreading for something a lot less played out. Because after all, it would still earn its place in 2000AD as a tale of crime and corruption in space, wouldn't it, so it's not like those stories where the reveal of a vampire is somewhat undermined because you're reading it in The Bumper Book Of Vampire Stories: this could still go either way. And take its own sweet time about it, too: to the annoyance of some, incorrect readers of the weekly prog, Abnett and Culbard were given half a year to bring this arc in, and yeah, maybe there wasn't much blowing up by 2000AD standards, but it gave the story exactly what its justfiably paranoid cast never had: room to breathe. As for whether we have that, well: in Brink's timeline, it's now 50 years to the final evacuation of Earth, but, much like the survival offworld of strong unions and a free press, that feels like the sort of wayward optimism I've come to expect from dystopias.

[Sloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

What could have been a good novella is instead a mediocre comic. As interesting as the plot is, at the end of the day it's 99% just people talking - and on a text-only page, it would be riveting dialogue, but on a comic page it's talking heads constantly reminding us that nothing is happening. Don't get me wrong, the art's superb (with the action happening roughly simultaneously, you can really see the improvement made since book 1), but the script just doesn't give Culbard all that much to draw. Also, it's much better collected than it was in the prog.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a bravura piece of stroytelling, this instalment is set concurrent with Book One. A journalist investigates the shootings that killed Kurtis' partner, putting together connections between those deaths, the Corp activities and the odder aspects of Habitat unions. The usual deceptively slow investigation that ends in something utterly wild. Best contemporary comic series by a mile. 2000AD still has the chops, it seems.

[Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

still one of the best series currently coming out of 2000AD and the loop back to book one reintroduces the jeopardy as with only cameo appearances from the series regulars it felt much more open ended on what could happen

and speaking of endings, it also very nearly pulled a blinder in the final pages and if it had it would have been the full five stars

but it fumbled it at the last so only four even if its a very strong 4 going on 4.5

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recent Reads: Brink Book 5. Dan Abnett and I N J Culbard's post-Anthropocene fusion of noir and cosmic horror takes an intriguing swerve backwards with a parallel story to Book 1, as a journalist investigates the deaths of a cop and some workers. It goes all the way to the top.

[Gary Varga · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume had a Woodward & Bernstein feel to it. And yet it is far more bizarre than you can imagine unless you have read the prior four volumes.

A thoroughly enjoyable and challenging read.

Next!!!

[Mikael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite all the good narrative and characters it ends on another sort of cliffhanger.

[Will L · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very good and I followed all the threads until the end at which point I was expecting some kind of reveal of what's 'really going on', but I'm left none the wiser. Is that intentional?

[Cloak88 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit different from the previous books.
Not bad, but not my favorite

Review to follow