Review by Luke Williams
The Comic: The Eisner, Harvey and Reuben Award-winning Concrete is back with a five-part story of amnesia, wilderness, and suspense. Concrete has entered the desert and not come back. Larry and Maureen are frantic. Reports come that he is wandering the nearby arid mountains, covered with blood, attacking people. Concrete, lightning-struck, confused, roams a frightening world he can’t understand. Roars tear across the sky. A strange globe rises. His body is sheathed in stone. He thinks he is being hunted. People are a threat. His journey back to life, and his friends’ dire search against a looming deadline, is as strange and tense as any Concrete story ever told…
The Review: Unbelievably, it is 20 years now since the last series of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete. That’s a long time. A survivor of the early days of Dark Horse, Concrete has reappeared at a time of considerable flux at its American publisher, and many of its contemporaries from Dark Horse Presents, such as, Roachmill, The Mask and Cross are nowhere to be seen. It says something for Concrete’s following that the series still has such a draw despite that long period of absence.
This long term fan, for one, had given up waiting for the next instalment and had just assumed Paul Chadwick had found something else to do. It turns out that this has series been in gestation for around ten years. Chadwick is notoriously slow, but the results are usually worth the wait. But 20 years? That’s quite a gap.
”Concrete’s always on my mind,” he told Publisher’s Weekly back in May, addressing questions about the story’s decade-long gestation and discussing his Concrete prose novel, and revealing another is on the way. “He’s a big part of my fantasy life. The fact is, I didn’t wait to do this story so much as it took that long to develop it. I would say writing and drawing in earnest started a decade ago, but it’s been germinating a long time.”
Anyhoo, seeing as basically the time between the last series and this one encompasses at least one comic reading generation, introductions are probably in order.
Concrete is political speech writer Ron Lithgow. Ron had the (mis) fortune of being kidnapped by aliens and his brain transplanted into a body akin to, concrete. Unable to keep his existence secret, the US government tried to pass him off the result of experimentation into creating a cyborg. The bookish, but romantic and adventurous Ron has made the best of his situation and has seen the opportunity to use the incredible eyesight and physical durability his alien encounter gave him on a life of adventure.
He has also taken it as an opportunity to hep those less fortunate than himself, raising money and funding his adventures by dictating his experiences to his aide Larry Munro whilst being observed by scientist Dr. Maureen Vonnegut (no relation). Ron’s survived working as a stunt man, walked the ocean floor, performing mine rescue, amidst a series of mishaps and dramas that come from being ten feet tall and weighing several tonnes in a human world that is far too fragile for you.
Chadwick has also used the strip as a vehicle to discuss many political and environmental issues. While it is clear which way Chadwick leans politically and what his, and Concrete’s, opinions are, he doesn’t bludgeon the reader in the way other creators may do.
The original ten-issue series won multiple Eisner Awards, including Best Continuing Series, Best Black-and-White Series, and Best Writer/Artist for Paul Chadwick.
Despite his ever present friends, Concrete comes across as quite lonely with a tendency to introspection, contemplation and over thinking and often lets his imagination run riot. In the most recent series The Human Dilemma, the Eisner Award-winning tale first published in 2004–2005(!), available in collection, Concrete gave birth to a smaller version of himself. This “baby” is currently in a coma, but travelling with the trio and being monitored by Maureen and this is where we catch up with them. The three main characters are well rounded and realised, Larry a little reckless and still reeling from his recent, in the series, anyway, near death experience. Concrete is frustrated at the dichotomy of his “new” existence. Maureen is a little cold, distant but compassionate at the same time.
In Stars Over Sand, Conc’, Larry, Maureen and Junior are travelling to a conference where Concrete is due to give a speech, taking the opportunity to see some sights along the way. After drafting his presentation, Concrete leaves the camper van they are travelling in and accidentally wanders off into an oncoming storm. And that’s where his troubles begin.
Chadwick’s art is a curious mix of Jack Kirby and Moebius, it’s beautiful. Illustrative rather than flashy, but with fascinating camera angles, and use of cutaways and page layouts to tell the story, colouring is that wonderful flat European style.
Slow paced, but with little to no extraneous flab, like every other Concrete series, there are lots of wonderful character moments and thoughtful and thought provoking sub plots. Concrete stories are oddly reassuring and comforting, like a warm blanket, despite the drama that will unfold.
If your reviewer was going to be mean, if there is something that lets this issue down, it is that it assumes too much of readers’ knowledge of the characters and situations. It’s been twenty years, for Cliff’s sake. I can barely remember what happened at the end of The Human Dilemma!
Luckily, I have those back issues in the attic, but new readers may be put off. But I would urge them to make that small investment in the trade paperbacks collecting the rest of the series: you won’t regret it.
On the basis of this first issue, this new series looks like it will be another worthy instalment in the story of everyone’s favourite alien abductee.
Luke Williams
• Concrete: Stars Over Sand #1 by Paul Chadwick, with a cover by Paul Chadwick, was published last month and copies may be available from your Local Comic Shop. #2 is published next week (29th July) | Check out availability from Forbidden Planet (Affiliate Link)
• A collection of Concrete: Stars Over Sand will be published by Dark Horse on 9th March 2027 | ISBN: 978-1506710631 | Preorder it here from AmazonUK | Check out availability to preorder this collection from Forbidden Planet (Affiliate Link)
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Paul Chadwick is a writer, artist, and creator of the popular comic book Concrete, who was educated at the ArtCenter College of Design and soon after began storyboarding for film and television. He is also known for his work on Another Chance to Get it Right.
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Brought up on a diet of Commando, British Boys Annuals and Asterix, Lucas Williams’s day job limits his reading time. Luckily for everyone else this also restricts his writing time.
Categories: Comics, downthetubes News, Features, Reviews, US Comics
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