Review by Frank Plowright
In the real world during the early 20th century Jekyll Island, off the Georgia coast, was a desirable and relatively private location for second homes. For the purposes of this alternate world period thriller it’s the location where civic-minded industrialists gather to discuss how they might fund the preservation of the capitalist system.
Writers Steve Nedvidek, Ed Crowell and Jack Lowe (billed in that order) deal in broad strokes, rolling out a largely secret battle for humanity’s fate encompassing roughly a decade following the end of World War I. It’s a time of uncertainty, but with opportunities to be seized, and real world events are frequently incorporated into an alternate world drama. Some, such as anarchist activity, are well used in prompting the plot, while others, such as Adolf Hitler’s failed Munich coup are forced inclusions merely to present a historically famous person.
It feeds into an extremely leisurely pace for a story constructed as if a TV drama with long conversations, rather than exploiting what comics can do. It’s testament to the good ideas and appealing personalities that Jekyll Island Chronicles remains a page-turner.
That’s also down to artist J. Moses Nestor’s hard work on two-thirds of the book. He realises locations around the world, and floods homes and laboratories with detail, convincing that these are places where people live and work. His people can be posed, but the story veers from conversations in opulent houses to steampunk superhero action, and Nestor in his first professional assignment delivers it convincingly and with style (sample art). Prentiss Rollins takes over for the final third, and he maintains the high artistic standard.
The three sections were originally issued between 2018 and 2021 as three slimmer individual graphic novels titled A Machine Age War, A Devil’s Reach and A Last Call. This combined version doesn’t require the summary those volumes lacked to follow a large cast and their activities. If there’s a single connecting thread it’s the undervalued genius of Nikolai Tesla. The writers extrapolate his actual and theoretical scientific discoveries to create world-changing possibilities, the devices brought to convincing life by both artists as a slow recognition of a massive threat emerges.
Although for a long while troubled with faulty pacing, The Jekyll Island Chronicles thrills and entertains in offering a view of what might have happened. Or perhaps it did, and it’s all been hushed up until now.
