Review by Frank Plowright

Snow Angels is Jeff Lemire and Jock’s version of The Road, but instead of just being set in a decaying post-apocalyptic society it’s set in one where the world is covered in ice. The very few surviving people have adapted to the cold and constructed a mythology about their environment, which is a massive ice trench with the sea beneath.

Milliken and the younger Mae Mae have grown up in a world where their environment has taken on a religious significance, and it’s been embedded that rules are to be followed. Received wisdom has it that the trench is endless, and leaving it is forbidden because death will result. Lemire concentrates on the girls and their father, who’s taken them on a skating trip to celebrate Milliken’s twelfth birthday. They travel far enough to reach parts rarely seen, and that’s when discoveries are made, not least a threat distinctively designed by Jock that might be a robot or might be a human in a complex form of armour.

Jock’s art is impressive throughout, creating considerable atmosphere from very little in the way of surroundings. Lemire’s plot calls for certain objects to be seen to supply speculation and mystery, but otherwise Jock creates a bleak landscape where the only exception to the snow and ice is the warm clothing worn by the cast. The people are seen through particles of snow and obscured by shadow, often to the extent of just being a few details picked out on a silhouette, which is all extremely effective in conveying the conditions.

At the point where it seems Lemire is taking his homage to The Road a little too far, he swerves away. There are mysteries and reasons behind them to be revealed, and the father’s placed in a situation where secrets he’d preferred to have kept to himself must come out, and they reshape the reader’s understanding of at least a small part of this world.

This can be read as a viable atmospheric drama complete in itself, and was considered worthy of an Eisner Award for Best Webcomic when serialised, but there is also a Volume 2. Both are combined for the hardback Library Edition.